TYRANT DRAFT VOTING & COMMENTARY THREAD THE TEAMS: argentine soccer fan 1) Adolf Hitler (Nazi Germany) 2) The Three Pashas (Turkey) 3) Francisco Solano Lopez (Paraguay) 4) Ne Win (Burma) 5) Heliogabalus (Roman Empire) 6) Ho Chi Min (Vietnam) nicephoras 1) Vladimir Lenin (Soviet Union) 2) Tamerlane (Central Asia) 3) Shi Huang-di (China) 4) Charlemagne (France) 5) Peter the Great (Russia) 6) Lucius Corenlius Sulla (Roman Empire) The Big Ticket 1) Mao Zedong (China) 2) Benito Mussolini (Italy) 3) Tito (Yugoslavia) 4) Charles Taylor (Liberia) 5) Chiang Kai-shek (China) Dirt McGirt 1) Saddam Hussein (Iraq) 2) Napoleon Bonaparte (France) 3) Attila the Hun (Hunnic Empire) 4) Kaiser Wilhelm II (Prussia/Germany) 5) Queen Isabella I (Spain) blackjack 1) Josef Stalin (Soviet Union) 2) Suharto (Indonesia) 3) Pope Lucius III (Italy) 4) Francisco Macías Nguema (Equatorial Guinea) 5) Louis XIV (France) 6) Hippias (Greece) DoyleG 1) Pol Pot (Cambodia) 2) Mengistu Halle Mariam (Ethiopia) 3) Bokassa (Central Africa) 4) Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania) 5) Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (Portugal) 6) Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines) SoFla Metro 1) Nero (Roman Empire) 2) Mugabe (Zimbabwe) 3) Robespierre (France) 4) Tomás de Torquemada (Spain) 5) Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus) 6) Pedro Antonio Marin aka Manuel Marulanda Velez (Colombia) CrewDust 1) King Jong-il (North Korea) 2) Shah of Iran (Iran) 3) Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire) 4) Muammar al-Gaddafi (Libya) 5) General Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (Cuba) 6) Sargon (Akkadian Empire) JeremyEritrea 1) Dr. François Duvalier (Haiti) 2) Franco (Spain) 3) King Henry VIII (England) 4) Cosimo de' Medici (Italy) 5) Caracalla (Roman Empire) 6) John of England (uh... England) HerthaBerwyn 1) Genghis Khan (Mongolia) 2) Alexander the Great (Greece) 3) Charles V (Flanders) 4) Augustus (Roman Empire) 5) Oliver Cromwell (England) 6) Sui Yang-Ti (China) dogface 1) Hideki Tojo (Japan) spejic 1) King Leopold II (Belgium) 2) Pinochet (Chile) 3) Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan) 4) Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) 5) Franz Joseph I (Austrian-Hungarian Empire) 6) Mother Teresa GringoTex 1) Santa Anna 2) Apostle Paul (Turkey) 3) President James Polk (United States) 4) The Comanche - (Mexico/US) BudWiser 1) Phalaris (Acragas; Sicily) Panfilo 1) Fidel Castro (Cuba) 2) Ahuitozoti (Mexico) 3) House of Saud (Saudi Arabia) IntheNet 1) Osama bin Laden (Al Qaeda) 2) Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) 3) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Iran) 4) King Herod 5) Muhammad ʻAta as-Sayyid (Saudi Arabia) 6) no pick ElJefe 1) Idi Amin (Uganda) 2) Ivan the Terrible (Russia) 3) Enver Hoxha (Albania) 4) Hafez al-Assad (Syria) 5) Videla (Argentina) Matt in the Hat 1) Gaius Julius Caesar (Roman Empire) 2) Ramsses II (Egypt) 3) Ferdinand II (Roman Empire) 4) King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia) soccernutter 1) Kim Il Sung (North Korea) 2) Omar Al Bashir (Sudan) 3) Slobodan Milosevic (Serbia/Yugoslavia) 4) Erich Hoeniker (East Germany) 5) Mullah Mohammed Omar (Taliban-Afghanistan) 6) Salvatore Riina (Sicily) peledre 1) Vladislav III AKA Vlad The Impaler (Wallachia) 2) Jack A. Warner (CONCACAF) 3) George W. Bush (United States) 4) Lucius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus 5) Pablo Escobar (Colombia) YankHibee 1) Shaka Zulu (Africa) 2) Pope Boniface VIII 3) Caligula (Roman Empire) 4) Andrew Jackson (United States) I made a poll partly because I'm a bs poll junkie and partly to make it easy for the more casual observers to make a pick. Since polls are limited to 16 choices, this only includes those who had the perseverance to make at least 5 picks. I think anyone should be invited to vote and comment, however, I will keep separate records of the votes of the participants and non-participants. As I've seen in other drafts, it's great when the people rank their picks 1-5 and make comments. Am I forgetting anything? ----- The reason I volunteered to keep the record was that I would have joined in, but somehow I missed it when this draft was started by GringoTex. It was frustrating to watch such an interesting draft get unorganized and when Ombak came in, I thought there was hope (plus it was totally hilarious.) Since I was paying close attention anyways I figured I could participate this way. I'm no history buff, but the topic of tyrants has always been so interesting to me. Many years ago I had a particular set of friends which would get together and consume quantities of cigars & good scotch doing this exact same thing. It wasn't called a draft and we didn't have wikipedia to instantly look everything up, but we would share horror stories about these characters and try to out do each other. One of the things I find most compelling of these discussions was always the resulting conversation of "how the f*ck did the people the tyrants ruled let themselves end up like that?" Some part of that question is deeply arrogant (it obviously would never happen to us) and some is deeply uncomfortable (it could obviously happen anywhere given the right ingredients.) Thank you to those who participated and those who made write ups (especially the personal ones. )
I voted for ASF. Heliogabalus may have been a pervert, but he was a cruel pervert. Blackjack 2nd, Nicephoras 3rd (Nice was slow and let Blackjack get Stalin). I'm partial to the tyrants who have few redeeming qualities and just kill to hide it, not the great conquerors of history. I was greatly disappointed that Gringotex didn't draft Marvin Zindler. There's slime in Gringo's ice machine.
I voted for Spejic. Very well thought out with the personality cult angle. If fictional characters were not ruled out the obvious pick would be God. I mean come on. The great flood, Soddom and gmorrah etc. Plus If he created us he could of at least given us imortality! God is directly responsible for EVERY death!
How about Sauron? Wasn't he worse than God? I like Blackjack and Nicephoras. I voted for Blackjack. Strong 20th century lineup and some interesting historical figures as well.
i voted for Spejic. a great list topped off with Saparmurat Niyazov. now that guy really takes tyranny in the 20th century to new heights. changing the word for bread and the month of april to his late mothers name is, well, inspired. others i enjoyed were nicephoras(some really interesting picks and always a good read), ASF(again, some quality choices and a terrific read on Francisco Solano Lopez) and HerthaBerwyn(an excellent list overall, some really strong selections). i was enjoying reading the draft and it was a shame that it concluded early. still, thanks from an outsider looking in to all that participated in it.
I picked CrewDust because he had well selected modern tyrants except for one pick, and that one proved that he knew something about history. I don't think that Sargon is someone you bump into browsing through some Harper's lists looking for a good pick. Not that I did that. I did not vote for myself because that is tacky and because I clicked the wrong button and can't go back and fix it now. For everyone that picked me, thank you so much for showing democracy sucks.
The Big Ticket's team is stacked and got my vote. I would have picked the first team, but I can't vote for a team with Hitler in it.
I truly couldn't decide, there were so many really good, interesting and varied picks. But I gave it to ASF because of his write ups, especially of Solano Lopez and Videla. He actually snaked the Videla pick, made an excellent write up and then blithely gave it away, but not before attaching it to himself. With a vacuum of leadership and the general thread lethargy, his aggressiveness (along with his good picks) was the deciding factor for me, even after I threw out his luck-of-having-first-pick choice. Honorable Mentions: ElJefe (Enver Hoxha is a fave) blackjack, DoyleG, The Big Ticket, nicephorus. Best Shades: Best Hat:
I had two problems. First, I missed my pick and Stalin would have clinched it for me, I think. With Stalin, Tamerlane and Shi-Huang Di I easily would have had the best first 3 picks. Lenin's not a bad consolation prize......but he's not Stalin. The other problem was that I was saving one big and one smaller surprise for the next two rounds - Basil II Bulgaroktonos. This man who obliterated Bulgaria in the early 11th century and then to demonstrated his ruthlessness took 10,000 hostages. He organized those hostages into hundreds, and out of each 100 he put out both eyes of 99 of the men and left the leader with one eye only. And then sent them back to the Czar of the Bulgars. Apparently upon seeing this troop of eyeless men, the Bulgar Czar had a heart attack and died 3 days later. Now THAT is tyranny. My second sleeper was Thutmose III. A cruel bastard - he erased the memory of his stepmother Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh of Egypt. He destroyed practically everything she built or replaced her names everywhere and killed many of those loyal to her. He was also a great military commander (unlike Ramsees II, who was not) and conquered his way into Nubia and Syria. And he began many of the projects that Ramses II would finish. I probably would have taken either of those two ahead of Charlemagne, but I didn't think anyone would pick them and then ran out of rounds!
It is a tough call. I like asf, nice, blackjack, and spejic. I think I will actually go with nice. After all, he did pick Lenin. And Stalin could not have happened without Lenin. Additionally, I think he got the pick of round three, though only slighly over spejic's ode to the Turkmenistan mother. I considered asf for body count alone! To add another "best of" By round: 1 - spejic - The top 5 or 6 were fairly obvious. I actually thought it would be Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol, and probably Saddam. Apart from that, King Leopold II was a steal not be in the above mentioned group. 2 - blackjack - This was a pick I was sure would go in the first round, but did not. A nice pickup in an overall weak round (considering that there were still some amazing tyrants out there) 3 - nicephoras - As I said above, it was, IMO, the steal of the draft, in a rather strong round. Apart from Shi Huang-di, other great picks were Francisco Solano Lopez (asf), Bokassa (DoyleG), Mobutu Sese Seko (CrewDust), and Saparmurat Niyazov (spejic). 4 - SoFla Metro - Noone expects the Spanish Inquisition...except those in a tyrant draft. SoFla Metro came through in fine colors. Great picks and fine colors. Good words, great picks, and fine colors.... 5 - argentine soccer fan - In this round, the picks became mostly popular. But the best was the first: Heliogabalus. asf showed how he can rack up the body count. 6 - Too few picks...