Just embarked on my second map ever, and it's awesome. It's autumn of the second year. The map is Haunted Mountains meets Joyous Wilds Grasslands. My dwarves embarked on what seemed like the very top of the mountains. I built a temporary hall right under the wagon and then built a tunnel system down, down, down to the grasslands, where I started my real fort. Halfway there, I found my chasm, full of Batmen and Naked Mole Dogs. No GCS, sadly.
The mountains are really craggy, and immediately on embark I noticed tons of gems, lignite, platinum and iron ore. After quarrying out what I could find, I ended up with somewhere around 1500 total iron ore (I need to check that again, but considerably more than 1000), including all three ores. And I've barely done any mining at all.
So in the second summer I decided to do a little bit of exploratory mining, and within about one minute I ran into a special blue ore. How about that. I got out with 10 before closing down the tunnel - I won't look for more until I'm a little more prepared.
Because of the settings I used when looking for the site, I know there's at least an underground pool somewhere. There's the possibility of a river, and maybe a magma pool, too, though I'm not banking on it. No pipe, though.
The only downside, besides the lack of GCS, is that my dwarven outpost liaison seems to have died the second he walked in my fort. Probably raped by unicorns or satyrs (the map is often swarming with them) on the way over. I didn't even realize it until the caravan was gone and I was checking out my stockpiles.
"Urist, what are these dwarf bones doing in my wood stockpile? ... Oh, it's him, is it? Hmm. I was wondering why he was late to the meeting."