Xilinx Microblaze - bootloading from flash

[asmi]

The Zedboard has a lot of things I can't imagine using for my application and the Arty has the Arduino-esque headers. I need to control a number of programmable switched capacitor network bandpass/lowpass filters, some programmable instrumentation amplifiers plus a few SPI devices including a 4-channel DDS. The onboard dual 12-bit ADC is also attractive since my application involves half a dozen relatively low speed analog signals I have to acquire.

All 7 series FPGAs and Zynqs (except for few low-end parts) have built-in 12bit ADC.
If the board is intended to be used in specific project and Z7 suits it - that's great. I was talking about more general-purpose prototyping platforms, which are going to be used for prototyping multiple projects. And in general I don't like Zynqs because they only exist in a handful of package and density options, and they are very expensive (unless you're willing to go for a gray market). This is why I like Artix-7 and Spartan-7, they provide wide selection of package and density variants so that you can always select just the right device for a project.

[NorthGuy]

If you don't need much on the board, as you describe, I would go with CMOD-S7 or CMOD-A7.