Sidenote, if our embark doesn't give us such an instant survival challenge that we HAVE only one solution for staying alive and all must do it as quick as possible, then we're surely going to play with considerable variety... If you all play similarly to me I'm going to be sooooooo surprised
I don't really like to vote blind, and I'm blind until a bit after I get home from work tonight, so I'm not voting on anyone's map, nor offering my own yet! But there's no need to wait for me to be able to vote - I'll go with whatever we decide on and have a heck of a lot of fun with it. And if you DO wait for me to vote, I'm going to be offering things that are survivable, sane, comfortable, convenient (at least by my standards). Likely to have a high number of types of biomes with as many types of differences between them possible (a mix of high and low, a mix of wet and dry, moderate temperatures.
Seeing what you guys are suggesting for our embarks, none of you would vote for my suggestions anyway!
A few things I notice (even blind) about The Gristly Biles (swamp embark)
Appears to be just one biome?
It's way way in the tippy top upper corner of the world, on the hot side. Might want to take the cursor on the overland map and move slowly south. How much area is listed as scorching there? If it's only scorching right around that spot, then it's probably not to crazy hot. But if it's scorching for a very long way, well... scorching is a range, and the deeper into that range you go, the hotter it gets. If the distance is really far, we might not care what syndrome is in whatever muck may be raining down on the area - the heat outside alone might quickly become dangerous for any dwarves or other life forms above ground.
I like that it has a brook. And it's a brook, not a stream/river/lake
And given the scorching climate, we might need that water. That could be the only water we get.
If it's really flat, then I like that too, but if it is flat, the terrain suggests a fairly shallow map.
A few things I notice (even blind) about The Barb of Fins (mountain valley embark)
It's scorching and has no permanent surface water source. Expect no water from the surface after the very start of the game.
it has a non-evil area and an evil area. It has mountains and non-mountains. It's likely to run very deep underground.
A few things I notice (even blind) about The Jungle of Hacks (mountain/forest embark)
It's got reasonable weather; otherwise my earlier comments (dual evil biomes and the potential difficulty of that) are all I see.
Voting blind, cause it's fun to: I like the mountain valley embark a TINY bit more than I like the other two, even with the lack of metal ores. If I had been picking a site, I can almost promise you I'd not have picked any of these to suggest