2011-04-05, 03:33 PM
Excadrill is based on Simon, Krookodile (the Ground/Dark aligator) is based on Kamina. I couldn't fit the star shaped glasses on Excadrill though.
As for the metagame, some of the biggest changes would be the huge increase in weather usage; Drizzle and Drought are now available outside of ubers, and Pokémon like Excadrill do extremely well in sand. There's also been a massive power creep which makes stalling a lot harder. Dream World abilities make both old and new Pokémon much more usefull(Ditto becomes one of the best revenge killers in the game with Imposter, Espeon/Xatu can reflect just about any non-attack move with Bounce, Blaziken got banned for speeding). There are quite a few new interesting abilities(Prankster, Illusion) and items(Balloon). Quite a few moves are no longer TMs(Stealth Rock, Dark Pulse), which means they're a lot harder to obtain. Another big thing (which I believe killed suicide leads) is the team preview(which in fact does not kill Zoroark).
There's also the new random online matches, where the 1v1 battles are fought with 3 Pokémon for each player, without any clauses. This means you will need different strategies for the ingame battles. And of course there are triple and rotation battles. Like you said, crazy stuff.
As for the metagame, some of the biggest changes would be the huge increase in weather usage; Drizzle and Drought are now available outside of ubers, and Pokémon like Excadrill do extremely well in sand. There's also been a massive power creep which makes stalling a lot harder. Dream World abilities make both old and new Pokémon much more usefull(Ditto becomes one of the best revenge killers in the game with Imposter, Espeon/Xatu can reflect just about any non-attack move with Bounce, Blaziken got banned for speeding). There are quite a few new interesting abilities(Prankster, Illusion) and items(Balloon). Quite a few moves are no longer TMs(Stealth Rock, Dark Pulse), which means they're a lot harder to obtain. Another big thing (which I believe killed suicide leads) is the team preview(which in fact does not kill Zoroark).
There's also the new random online matches, where the 1v1 battles are fought with 3 Pokémon for each player, without any clauses. This means you will need different strategies for the ingame battles. And of course there are triple and rotation battles. Like you said, crazy stuff.