Team Legion

Team Legion is a roboteering team captained by Gabriel Stroud, who have now entered five series of Robot Wars with their robot Sabretooth. The team had a notorious streak of bad luck, failing to win a televised fight for over fifteen years, but developed as one of the most familiar faces in the show before reaching the Heat Final in Series 9, and the 10 Robot Rumble in Series 10. The team are named after one of their featherweight competitors.

The Team
After debuting in Series 5 of Robot Wars with Sabretooth, Team Legion qualified for every subsequent series, including Series 7 which the team qualified for, but would have to withdraw from. Leading up to the team's first victory, the Robot Wars producers took an apparent liking to the team, and frequently involved them with promotional material. Leading up to Series 8, Team Legion were the centre of one of three teaser trailers, showing the team gazing at Sabretooth lovingly to the music of Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. Gabriel and Esme Stroud also appeared on The One Show to promote the series, and the team's collective photo is used as the primary image headlining Season 2 on the Robot Wars website, alongside Team Razer. Sabretooth would later be selected as one of the eight UK representatives in Robot Wars: World Series.

Gabriel Stroud
Gabriel "Gabe" Stroud is the captain of Team Legion, and is the owner of electronic assessment software company Assesstech. He is the lead designer of the Sabretooth series of Robot Wars, and consistently created a new version of the robot for each series of the show. Stroud is also the robot's driver on most occasions.

Stroud was a very vocal member of his team, notably speaking on the verge of tears after repairing Sabretooth before its battle against Jellyfish, while taking on a more confident persona in Series 10, shouting orders to teammate Robert Pickford while stating his confidence in victory.

Gabriel was specifically chosen to be a mentor in Robot Wars: Battle of the Stars. He joined Yorkshire triathletes Jonny and Alastair Brownlee, and the three entered with JAR. Stroud repaired JAR when necessary, and even donated one of his spare scoops to use on the front of the robot, although despite collecting a win over Interstellar: MML, the team eventually finished fourth in Episode 1.

Each member of Team Legion operates a featherweight machine, and in Gabriel's case, it is the team's namesake - rear-hinged flipper Legion. This robot made a cameo appearance in the first episode of Robot Wars: World Series, while Dara Ó Briain, Professor Noel Sharkey and Alex Shakespeare discussed the lower weight classes of combat robotics, using Legion as an example of a featherweight.

Gabriel Stroud also collaboratively runs a podcast focused on robotics, particularly Robot Wars and BattleBots, known as Inside the Bot. He records this alongside his employee and member of Team Danby, Will Sedgwick, who was present at the filming of Series 10, wearing a Team Legion hoodie albeit without officially being a team member.

Robert Pickford
Robert Pickford, more commonly Rob Pickford, is Gabriel's long-standing teammate, having competed in all of Team Legion's appearances. The director of a building company by trade, he is heavily involved with the build and repair process of each Sabretooth machine, and occasionally serves as the robot's driver, piloting Sabretooth in its Group Battle with TMHWK, Crank-E and Aftershock in Series 9, and its Redemption Robot Knockout against Apocalypse in Series 10.

In the team's featherweight competitions, Pickford is the operator of Django, a box-wedge shaped robot with a 'drisc' - a thinner spinning drum like that of Magnetar and Infernal Contraption.

Polly Parr-Stroud
Polly Parr-Stroud (Polly Parr in Series 5) accompanied the team in their first two appearances. At the time of Series 6, she was a nine-year old schoolgirl. Polly brought a stuffed tiger with her in Series 5, serving as the team's mascot.

Esme Stroud
Esme Stroud is known by the family as "the Robot Wars baby", as father Gabriel had to leave the studio while filming Series 5 to be with his pregnant wife, who gave birth that day. Esme was born, and joined Team Legion in Series 8. Angela Scanlon regularly mentions this fact in interviews, stating that she wished Esme was named Matilda. Esme Stroud accompanies Gabriel in all of their publicity appearances, such as The One Show.

Esme plays an active role on the team, operating Sabretooth's spinning drum in the robot's Group Battles in Series 8 and 9. She would have maintained this role throughout Sabretooth's competition in Series 9, but had to leave the studio before filming was completed, as she had exams on the weekdays of filming.

Gabriel Stroud is building a dedicated featherweight to be operated by Esme, although this robot is not yet complete. For her active involvement with Team Legion, Women in STEM awarded her a finalist certificate for the Best Female Role Model award in 2016.

Esme Stroud could not join the team in Series 10 due to the clashes with filming and her school exams, and fellow team member Al Cannon instead held a Team Legion shirt on a board to represent her in that series.

Harry Hills
Harry Hills was officially listed as a member of Team Legion in Series 8, and helped to design and build this version of Sabretooth, in his first heavyweight project. Hills was present with the team backstage, and was included in the team's photo-shoot, but as he is camera-shy, Harry did not join the team in the televised episode, nor was he present in the team's teaser trailer. Harry Hills was invited to join the team due to his links to Ellis Ware.

"I ended up linked with Legion for Series 8 because Ellis (of Pulsar fame) who had done all the design work/built all of Team Legion's current featherweights, Django & Legion namely, didn't have time to work on their heavyweight designs due to working on Pulsar. Myself and Ellis are fairly close friends and at the time I lived in the same county as Gabe and Rob. So the design job was offered to me. I took Gabe's list of components and designed a frame around them, similar to the unscaled cardboard models and drawings he had made. First heavyweight under pressure and time constraints. It looked the part but had issues intrinsic to the design. Aesthetics over function will do that, hah."

- Harry Hills on joining Team Legion

In Series 9, Harry Hills separated from Team Legion to form his own team, alongside his father Paul Hills. Together, they were known as Team Hobgoblin, and entered with their 'egg beater' spinner, Hobgoblin. However, much like Sabretooth in Series 8 before it, Hobgoblin was defeated by Eruption in its Group Battle as it could not self-right. In Series 10, Paul Hills did not return, and Harry Hills invited beetleweight roboteer Matt Smith, and Andy Russell, to join him, with Matt Smith becoming the driver of Hobgoblin, although the team still could not collect a win.

Harry Hills is primarily a featherweight roboteer, with his newest robots being Flatliner and Massacre. For more information, see here.

Al Cannon
Sixty-eight year old Al Cannon directs an engineering company, and is listed as the team's engineer in Series 9 and 10, assisting with the extensive repairs of Sabretooth in its heats. Gabriel Stroud referred to Al Cannon as the team's "secret weapon" after he had assisted the team behind-the-scenes for years, and Angela Scanlon told Team Legion to make sure he returned for Series 10 as the team's lucky charm, which he did, holding the Team Legion shirt in every battle to represent Esme Stroud.

Interestingly, the car driven by Gabriel Stroud in Sabretooth's VT during Series 10 actually belonged to Al Cannon, who performed the vehicle's wheel-spin in a televised shot.

Robots

 * NOTE 1: Gabriel Stroud was also directly involved with the competition process of JAR, but did not build the robot.
 * NOTE 2: Harry Hills competed in Series 9-10 with Hobgoblin.

Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 5
 * Losses: 10

NOTE: This wins/losses ratio does not include the performances of JAR or Hobgoblin

Outside Robot Wars
Gabriel Stroud's Legion and Robert Pickford's Django are both successful competitors on the featherweight circuit. Both robots competed at the Featherweight World Championship in 2016, where Legion did not experience high success, but Django reached the Grand Final, placing second after being flipped out of the arena by Explosion.

Gabriel Stroud acquired Dave Moulds' successful featherweight drum spinner 720, which he rebranded as Sabre20. He also purchased Hit Man, a robot which attempted to qualify for Series 4, from its previous owner. Stroud would then sell the robot to Team Underdog, who converted it into Ill-Tempered Mutt, and qualified for Series 9 with it before withdrawing.

Gabriel Stroud and Will Sedgwick have conceptualised a robot called Jack the Ripper, which they would like to enter into a hypothetical third series of BattleBots. They are receiving outside assistance with this build from Will Bales, team captain of Shenanigans & Co of HyperShock fame.

Team Legion competed at Extreme Robots in Guildford, 2017 using the newest revision of Sabretooth, but protected its identity by painting the robot white and naming it Atom. In its first battle, it fought Behemoth, Meggamouse, Saint and Dozer, but despite surviving for longer than Saint and Dozer, it was pitted by Behemoth. It then fought Tauron, Expulsion, Suspension and Cyclone, but was pitted by Cyclone. When paired with Thor in a tag team battle, Atom was left to fight alone against YOTON and Harpy, and was eventually immobilised. In another battle between it, Behemoth, Expulsion and Tauron, it survived until the time limit expired.

In October 2017, Gabriel Stroud and Al Cannon collaborated with John Reid to enter a heavyweight version of Legion into the Chinese TV show King of Bots, aired in January 2018. Their robot, Tánshè, was armed with a flipping bucket at the front, and was built at a cost of £35,000. The word Tánshè is Mandarin for 'catapult'. In the first round, it fought an invertible drum spinner, Dark Knight, but Tánshè flipped it against the wall for a knockout win in just over a minute. In the second round, Tánshè won a battle that Gabriel Stroud stated was the best fight he'd ever experienced, by flipping the tracked drum spinner, Hammerhead Shark out of the arena with barely thirty seconds left on the clock.

Trivia

 * Leading up to Sabretooth's appearance in Series 9, the social media hashtag #prayforgabe became widespread in the Robot Wars community, spurring on Gabriel Stroud to finally collect a televised win.
 * For Series 9, Gabriel Stroud manufactured 'Sabretooth mission badges', featuring the names of every team member. After Gabriel famously spoke the line "What we've created... it scares me!" in the Series 9 extended trailer, this screenshot was taken out of context by fans for the purposes of jokes at Stroud's expense. He responded by running a giveaway, encouraging fans to create the funniest question to which he could answer "it scares me", offering a Sabretooth mission badge as a prize.
 * On the 28th of March 2017, Inside the Bot began a campaign known as "#BringBackBash" and asked for 50,000 likes and shares on social media to try and get the BBC and Mentorn to bring back Sergeant Bash as a House Robot. Designs were drawn up on a whiteboard to show a Sergeant Bash that more closely resembled a tank, with his pincer and flamethrower still present, though at the back instead featuring a spinning drum to replace the visual saw.
 * Legion, the team's featherweight flipper, made a cameo appearance in the first episode of Robot Wars: World Series, during an educational segment on lower weight classes in UK robot combat.