Well the lighter one was accomplished with just a layer filled with white and set to soft light on top of everything else, so I can always work on both at the same time and see how it goes...

@Hai-Etlik: Now I feel bad. (Just kidding. ) I agree with most of what you're saying, but on the other hand, if I go with the dark version, it's not really meant to mimic any particular style. I just want it to look interesting. I had another color overlay around the coasts, similar to what I did with this month's Challenge map, but I wasn't liking how it turned out. Maybe I'll add it back in and experiment further.

A point in favor of the light version is that there's going to be forests on this map and probably quite a few labels, so yeah, the dark version might hurt that significantly, especially in making out detail. Well, I'll just go forward with both of 'em and post both at each stage and see what you guys think. It'll have to wait till next week though; I'm going out of town early early tomorrow AM for the holiday weekend.