Pokemon TCG Pocket is still incredibly popular, but at the beginning of the game, the number of ways to connect with other players is circumscribed. Trading still hasn’t been made available yet, and combat only has one standard format, which allows you to start a match with a friend or a random player. So to spice things up, the community is offering its own workarounds, including a brand fresh battle format that has been very well received so far: NOEX.
“NOEX” is a battle format with one uncomplicated rule: no EX Pokemon are allowed. EX Pokemon, if you’re not familiar, are extremely powerful monsters that are very complex to defeat, but which when destroyed give you two points, not just one. Due to their immense power, most good meta decks in Pocket rely on at least one EX card, and the end result is that you often run into many of the same decks in random battles. For example, over the last month I’ve been playing a deck that revolves around Pikachu EX and I’ve been fighting against a lot of Mewtwo EX, Charizard EX, and Starmie EX.
But in NOEX, all of these cards are banned, forcing players to build their decks around other Pokemon to get compelling combinations. For the purposes of this article, I participated in several NOEX battles myself. In one match I faced a Butterfree/Dugtrio deck that I had never seen before and it decimated my Nidoran army, and in another I barely managed to win against a weird Dragonite/Weezing combo thanks to a lucky final draw. It’s a fun format if you want to shake things up a bit.
Unfortunately, NOEX exists on the honor system. There’s no way to officially create your own battle formats in Pocket yet, so players have created them through word of mouth. If you want to join a NOEX battle, simply select “Private Match” under battles and apply “NOEX” as the password. But you basically have the honor of running a deck without Pokemon EX because there’s nothing in the system to stop you. Some players are already complaining about opponents bringing EX Pokemon into NOEX battles and spoiling their fun – an unfortunate risk with a community-driven format.
That said, it looks like NOEX is otherwise doing quite well. Community members are there praising it on Redditand while my personal experience is circumscribed, the speed with which I was able to get into games with others who followed this format indicates that it may have legs. It also appears that some players are suggesting other types of formats that can be done in the same way, such as only allowing one EX card in a deck, or not having decks that are considered “S-tier” by the community.
Hopefully, it won’t be long before we start rolling out fresh features that will hopefully eliminate the need for the community to come up with fresh things. We’ve already learned that there’s a “major update” coming in the near future that will include trading, and the fresh booster packs on the way will hopefully spice up the meta a bit as well. Given the immense popularity of TCG Pocket, updates can’t come rapid enough.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Her posts can be found on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
