Thinking it over, I think that the judges and the voters are judging similar entries by different standards than the other monsters.
For example, the last two rounds' thread on the Lantern Thralls has a great deal of discussion about their synergies and complexities based on the assumption that they will be used in groups. But they're not doing the same with the other pack monsters and hive monsters.
To my mind, you don't judge a wolf's stat block based on how it would work as a single wolf. You judge it based on how it works as a pack, which is how you will use it. Similarly, I've yet to see an adventure which has an encounter with a single Giant Bee.
Rather than thread jack a bunch of different submissions, I thought I'd open up a thread here for debate and discussion on this issue:
Should monster stat blocks be judged EQUALLY on how it works as a single monster and as part of a group of 4 or 6 such monsters OR should we judge based only on the single monster stat block?
Hey, I can participate right now. ;)
When I started fiddling with the idea of statting up the lantern thrall, I was concerned about the stacking effects. So after laying out the first draft, I spent the better part of an evening playtesting various combinations against various groups of various levels, to see if the CR system would be broken by the synergy. I found exactly the opposite. The old "twice as many = +2 CR" paradigm didn't break at all, it just lasted longer.
Three minotaurs can reasonably be called a CR 7 encounter. They can pump out a lot of damage, and soak a couple of fireballs. But six minotaurs isn't really a CR 9 encounter; each of them only has the abilities of one minotaur, and at that point the party is just a lot less vulnerable to what they do (which saves on healing), and can dispatch them without blowing top-level spells or other limited-use abilites. They may be as tough as a CR 9 encounter for a 4th level party, but not for a 9th level party. That nasty charge is useless when the target is flying.
Four lantern thralls, on the other hand, each have four times as many special abilities. These are still all CR 5 abilities: they're not more powerful than the minotaurs, and just as weak against fireballs (especially since they have to stay grouped to share boons). However, they're significantly more versatile, and since they have a master who is presumably more intelligent than them, they'll have a game plan. It'll be simple playbook stuff, not adaptive, but the selection of thralls in the group will be tailored to a purpose. You find these guys when they're carrying out missions, and if that mission is to take out the party, they'll operate more like a SWAT team than a thug squad. They'll pick a spot where peasants will die before them if fireballs come into play. They'll come in gaseous, materialize to take out the wizard with flaming scimitars, go gaseous again and drift up to bombard the rest with killer snowballs. But they've still got CR 5 powers and hit points and saving throws; there's nothing broken about them. They're really not any stronger than they were. They just haven't gotten boring like the minotaurs.
I based my voting on how well the writer handled the Special Abilities actually. (I assumed that anyone who made it this far could handle a competent stat block, and it would get a revision in edit and in development.)