VOTING: *** February '09 Challenge - Political Map ***

[CBDroege]

Hoel for meeting the requirements of the challenge most effectively
tcberry for the unique idea and superb execution
qbista for style and functionality

[Fabrice]

It is no easy choice but I think my votes go for:

tcberry: I am no baseball fan but there is some insight there: check a Paris - Marseilles soccer game and you see which kind of allegiances matter these days.

Gamerprinter: beautiful, stylish, asian: I like!

Korrigan: I love the letter that went with the map, I like the blood on the map, and I like zombies.

And a special "out of competition" bravo for Kuraru. It looks like his "Divine the next Challenge Subject" ritual misfired, so he drew and posted his map a few month early, but it was pretty nice and could have been a good entry for this month.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3759

[jfrazierjr]

Hard vote this month. Here are my votes in the order I picked them and why:

• Hoel: This was my favorite for several reasons, but mainly, I think this best expressed the intentions of the contest and went to the extreme to satisfy the requirements, by creating one but TWO levels of political divisions. This as excellent thinking outside of the box, and those flags and standards really really are excellently done. The map itself is a bit to blurry for me(may have been intentional to bring out the flags), but overall, the map was still very nicely done and it was the contest rules that made you get the win.
• Steel General: To me, this is by far the prettiest map for the sake of being a map, but it was second because Hoel outdid him on the political map part of the requirement both by sheer numbers as well as have two political divisions.
• Gameprinter: Very nice map, with clear identifiers as well as some very nice extra's such as the drawings of the prominent figures as well as the hanging banner type approach to the whole thing. There are a quite a few places where the map felt a bit crowded though with everything that was going on.