Yeah, I'm not a fan of everything dark age does, but some of them are pretty cool. BAM, the second one you linked, the goliath, was another one I found awfully tempting. I decided to go with the shadow elemental because it inspired a number of different ideas along with some alternative color schemes (so I could avoid doing something too close to the box art). But if I like the cast, I might pick up a few more for future projects. Zab, I'll have to take another look through the Wrath of Kings collection. There are definitely some neat models in that range too.
BAM, I figured something like that must have been the case for the voting. The two winners didn't make the cut (as far as I'm aware) for online voting, so it must have been judged onsite only. If I were coming up with my own list of ways I'd change the Crystal Brush, adding more categories like that would be up there on my list. With the reduced number of standard categories, it's getting very tough for an amateur to end up with an award. But, while the pros favor art pieces or GW and infinity, they aren't likely to spend time on Dark Age, Wrath of Kings, or any of the many other smaller games. So more special awards for those ranges would give more opportunity for the amateurs to get some recognition too. Now, prepping everything for online voting is time consuming, so I'd say do it like they did this year. Standard categories all go up for online votes. But the sponsor category winners are just chosen by the onsite judges.
