This is the place to vote for the Pangaea map making competition.  Details are in this thread:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1698/You_are_invited_to_help_judge_a_WarGear_mapmaking_competition (Copy/Paste into browser window.)

The only requirement to vote is you have to play each of the six pangaea maps at least once.  Then to vote post here with your top 3 favorite maps ranked. 

Deadline for votes: Midnight GMT September 15th, 2011

Here are the maps:

• Pang Age - http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Pang+Age/
• Pangaea and Panthalassa - http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Pangaea+and+Panthalassa
• Pangaea - http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Pangaea
• Pirates of Pangea - http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Pirates+of+Pangea
• Pangaea: Rise of the Chimp - http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Pangaea%3A+Rise+of+the+Chimp
• Sleestaktica - http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Sleestaktica

Please keep all other discussion out of this thread.  If you have any questions PM me or post them in the thread linked above. 

Only post votes in this thread, feel free to give your review of the boards or why you voted in the order you did, but please you other threads for discussion of boards.  ALL OTHER POSTS WILL BE DELETED!

1.  Pangaea:  Rise of the Chimp - Unique but straightforward gameplay & bonus structure.  Nice graphics.

2.  Cumberdale's board that was withdrawn?

3.  Sleestaktica - Superb graphics, decent gameplay.

4.  Pang Age

1: Pangea: Rise of the Chimp

2: Sleestaktica

3) Pang Age

1. Pang Age

2. Pirates of Pangea

3. Pangaea: Rise of the Chimp

1. Pangaea - Rise of the Chimp

2. Pang Age

3. Sleestaktica

1. Pangaea

2. Pangaea - Rise of the Chimp

3. Pangaea and Panthalassa

1. Pangaea

2. Pang Age

3. Pangaea - Rise of the Chimp

1. Pangea - Rise of the Chimp

2. Sleestaktica

3. Pirates of Pangea

1. Pangaea - Rise of the Chimp

2. Pangaea

3. Pang Age

1. Pangaea

2. Pirates of Pangea

3. Pangaea and Panthalassa

1 - Pang & Panth - simple design and play, but more challanging than it looks
1 - Rise of the Chimp - most unique of them all, large board so takes some time to play. only con is if you get behind early can be hard to come back

3 - Pangea - similar to Pang & Panth, but with better graphics altho it doesn't feel as friendly for some reason. larger map so is a bit more difficult too.
3 - Sleestaktica - another unique Yuma board, this is one i want to play more of to get a feel for it. But i'm impressed by the consistant 'Yuma feel' and the strategy needed for this board.

it's tough to rate these last two boards because they both have their unique strengths. In another competition they would probably come out on top - which i think is a compliment to both their creators and those designers that edged them out.

5 - Pirates -
5 - Pang Age -

1.Pangaea - Rise of the Chimp
2.Pirates of Pangea
3.Pang Age

1. Pangaea- Rise of the Chimp

2. Pangaea and Panthalassa

3. Pang Age

Overall:
Every map is very good.  I think better than an average map on wargear, and the average map on wargear is pretty good.  It was very tough to decide which maps were my favorites, there were things I liked and things I disliked about each.

My Map (Pangaea and Panthalassa) :
I knew that since I am fairly new to map making and had a limited time to make this map, I wanted to go with something small and simple.  This was actually a relief as the other maps I have made are generally large and complex, and have taken many long rounds of testing to get to a point where they were releasable.  I knew I didn't have time for that here.

So, I tried to make a map in the style of the classic Risk map, but a bit bigger (and obviously Pangaea themed).  By this I mean a map with no border modifiers, or other tricky stuff.  Something that can be enjoyed by a relatively new player.  I was careful to give plenty of chokepoints.  My India is based upon the original Australia (a kind of isolated small
continent).

I used ideas from my existing Land & Sea map (hordes on the water, normal continents on land, and harbors that allow travel between land and water).  One "problem" with my Land & Sea map is that the large # of harbors (which were dictated by the original Risk map design), caused the map to be fairly open.  For Pangea & Panthalassa I only had 3 harbors, and I placed mountains
where I felt they were needed to limit borders, since Pangaea is a single large land mass.

Since the gameplay was relatively simple, I had time to experimented a bit with the graphics, and I am fairly happy with the result. I found a brush set to help me put in the mountains, and learned how to make animated gifs for the wild card (which you can only see if you view the cards in the board viewer, not during the game).

Pang Age
Is this a Jurassic Park theme?  The font reminds me of the movies, and the nests/tracks are dinosaurs.  Good idea if so.

Pros:  Nice expansion of the hordes within a continent idea with the trail being stretched into a ring.  Feels like a Yertle map.  Good to see when a designer has their own recognizable style.  Good large map (IMO large maps are more difficult to keep from stalemate than small maps)

Cons: Maybe I had a few bad games, but I never had a ton of fun playing this map.  I'll definitely give it a few more shots, because bad luck and bad opponents can influence that negatively.  Some of this might be because I never felt like I had a good strategy (how should I handle the trail).   This might actually be a good sign, because it may indicate a higher replay value as I figure the map out.


Pirates
I played a few games on this, and enjoyed all of them.

Pros:  A fairly simple map.  The graphics on the ships look great, and I love how the sail changes color, but the unit # is on the boat itself. This is something I don't think I had seen before.

Cons:  Gameplay seemed straightforward,  I basically played the same every game (and won most of my games), so I don't have any strong desires to play more.

Sleestastika
Pros:  I think this is the best looking of all the maps.  Really neat how the 'abilities' light up along the bottom of the map when you take a citadel (I'm still not sure how this was done).  Gameplay is fun.  I like how each territory is split across two land continents to reinforce the 'splitting
up' of Pangaea.  Continent values right on the map are always a plus in my book.

Cons: Pangaea relevance is not as obvious, I later found out this was a 'Land of the Lost' themed map.


Pangaea
I was surprised when this map came out how superficially it looks similar to my own (hordes in the ocean, card theme is the same).

Pros: A fun map that plays a bit differently, between the large single continent land masses, and the hordes in the water.  Seems relatively balanced, although the games I played, I think the water was easier to win from.  I think mostly this was because with the fog, you can hide your water bonus more easily than you land bonus, plus players naturally seemed to compete more for the land so maybe this was a factor of who I was playing against.  Good large map (IMO large maps are more difficult to keep from stalemate than small maps)

Cons: Texture between land & water initially made colors look different over land & water, but I got used to it quickly.

Rise of the Chimp
I think this was the most innovative of the Pangaea maps, but I'm still not sure about this one.  It seems like there might be one single best strategy, but I haven't quite played enough games to be sure, so replay value might diminish once you have this map figured out.

Pros:  A neat concept with the evolution bonuses.  Good large map (IMO large maps are more difficult to keep from stalemate than small maps).

Cons: Textures of the humans/uprights/apes made it difficult to tell some colors.  One of the colors looks very similar to neutral.  Sometimes I did not realize it was the same player who had an upright & a human because the colors look a bit different.  This map seemed to take a long time to load.


My Votes (this was very tough, even having played every map at least twice, I feel like I needed about 2 or 3 more games on every map to really have a strong opinion):

#1) Pang Age
#2) Sleestastika
#3) Rise of the Chimp

Ahem! "Please keep all other discussions out of this thread" - original poster.

1) Pangaea: Rise of the Chimp

2) Sleestaktica

3) Pang Age

It was a very difficult choice, particularly deciding between the top three. All maps were very well done...

1) Pangea: Rise of the Chimp

2) Sleestaktica

3) Pang Age

(Where can I give a detailed critique of these boards?)

Excellent job everyone! It was a very fun contest. Great ideas!

1. Rise of the Chimps

2. Sleestaktica

3. Pirates of Pangaea

(I'm not super stuck on voting for my own, so if this is frowned up or jerky then I would be good with updating my vote.)

1. Sleestaktica

2. Pirates of Pangaea

3. Pangaea