Russian Legion's 2014 Chicago Experience - Struggle to Contend From Chris Williams at Virtue Paintball: Who are the Russian Legion? The Russian Legion is legendary among professional paintball teams. For years, the "dream" for most of us in the USA has been to make paintball into a professional sport with paid athletes who can devote their time exclusively to training. Well, the Russians have already been doing this for the last 10 years, thanks to a private training facility in Moscow where players can train on a daily basis with the assistance of dedicated coaches. Their commitment to daily training has produced some of the best players in the history of the sport. Why did Virtue decide to support this team? We admire the Russian Legion's commitment to paintball and their style of play. They were the first team to really perfect the breakout and would consistently run and gun games to victory within the opening seconds. It took the rest of the industry years to adopt and mimic their dominating style of play. Dynasty is the only other team that comes to mind who have made the same kind of generational impact, and they probably get more credit because the Russians are so mysterious. Watching them play, the Russian Legion style and form is beautiful, it's like watching ballet with guns on the paintball field. From a manufacturers perspective, the Russians provide the most demanding feedback of any team we've ever worked with. Whether it's nitty gritty details about the "feel" of a trigger switch or adapting the development of gear to suit their style of play, the Russians are a great team to work with since our focus at Virtue is to design products with tangible performance benefits. What products to they use from Virtue? The Russians use Virtue Spire 200s, Spire 260s, and of course the new Virtue VIO goggle system. We've had a relationship with the Russian Legion since the beginning as the Russian have always used Virtue Products to one degree or another for years. Going into 2014, we struck a deal with Valken that freed up the Russians to use the VIO (they were already using the Spire).