Aw shucks, Carl, ya big galoot.
After watching Dave and Martin's Fireside Chat, I wanted to contribute somehow, and they took me up on the idea of a map. I don't know how much it'll remind anyone of Norway, but I do like how Martin's basic idea is playing out. It's looking like a long village at the base of a 3-level hill (and climbing up a bit), which I don't think has really been done on an 8x22 geoboard. Enjoying it quite a bit, and appreciating D&M's patience and good humour as I worked through some rough drafts.
It's funny nowadays how "the Hatten Feel" seems to be a thing, at least in my mind. It's a certain spacing of buildings, with some Orchards, Walls, and Hedges to break things up. Very few ingredients, but with the proper spacing, you get a very playable map. I find myself wanting to achieve that at times, and I think the IR1 board has some of that feel.
I do need to point out that the long hill edge (A10-GG10) actually isn't geomorphic with the Korea geoboards, but hopefully that won't matter. The other 3 sides are standardly-geomorphic. One of the early draft versions had a narrow river running the length of the board but exiting the short edges in nonstandard locations and I gotta say, it really made me think that "river geomorphism" in ASL was a bad idea. You can do so much fun stuff if you aren't forced to use up A4-A7 and GG4-GG7 with rivers going offboard, and we rarely butt two river boards together anyway.
I may lean on D&M to allow the second IR board to have a nonstandard River; the freedom is awesome.
Another minor correction or whatever - I darn well want to at least provide the Patrons with a PDF version of the IR1 board that is suitable for printing; that's a lot more fun than just a VASL version. And hey, maybe these will be like ASL collector's items or something - only available to the Discerning Few. I also want to try doing both Winter and Summer versions because that'd be an interesting technical challenge.
In terms of naming board artwork, I've thought about adding a board- specific overlay to VASL board 3, adding labels to various terrain features in honor of various ASL contributors. I know 3M2 is too big to be a "House", but IMO there's no more famous building in the game and it seems like it should be called The Youse House. Shrug.