Pokemon TCG Pocket continues to be ridiculously widespread, however within the early days of the sport there are solely a restricted variety of methods to interact with different gamers. Trading nonetheless hasn’t been launched but, and battling solely has one common format that permits you to begin a match with a pal, or a random participant. So with the intention to spice issues up, the group is arising with its personal workarounds, together with a model new battle format that is been very well-received up to now: NOEX.
“NOEX” is a battle format with one easy rule: no EX Pokemon allowed. EX Pokemon, for those who’re unfamiliar, are ultra-powerful monsters which can be very troublesome to defeat, however which award two factors upon destruction versus only one. Due to their sheer energy, most good meta decks in Pocket are constructed round no less than one EX card, and the top result’s that you simply are inclined to run into quite a lot of the identical decks time and again while you have interaction in random battles. For the final month or so, for example, I’ve been taking part in a deck that revolves round Pikachu EX, and have been combating quite a lot of Mewtwo EX, Charizard EX, and Starmie EX.
But in NOEX, all these playing cards are banned, which forces gamers to construct decks round different Pokemon for some fascinating combos. For this text, I engaged in a few NOEX battles myself. In one match I confronted a Butterfree/Dugtrio stall deck that I’d by no means seen earlier than that decimated my military of Nidoran, and in one other I barely scraped out a win towards a wacky Dragonite/Weezing combo because of a fortunate last draw. It’s a enjoyable format if you wish to shake issues up a bit.
Unfortunately, NOEX exists on an honor system. There’s no technique to formally create your individual battle codecs in Pocket simply but, so gamers have created this by word-of-mouth. If you wish to be a part of a NOEX battle, merely choose “Private Match” below battles, and use “NOEX” because the password. But you are basically in your honor to make use of a deck with no EX Pokemon, as there’s nothing within the system to cease you. Some players are already complaining about opponents bringing EX Pokemon to a NOEX fight and ruining their enjoyable – an unlucky hazard of a community-created format.
That mentioned, it seems like NOEX is in any other case going fairly nicely. Community members are praising it on Reddit, and whereas my private expertise is proscribed, the pace with which I used to be capable of get into matches with others who have been respecting the format signifies this may need legs. It additionally seems like some gamers are suggesting different sorts of codecs that may be achieved in the identical means, equivalent to solely permitting a single EX card per deck, or no decks thought of by the group to be “S-tier.”
Hopefully, it will not be lengthy earlier than we begin to see new options creep in that can hopefully remove the necessity for the group to invent stuff to do. We’ve already realized that there is a “main replace” coming within the close to future that can embrace buying and selling, and new booster packs on the best way will hopefully boost the meta a bit as nicely. Given how wildly widespread TCG Pocket is, the updates cannot come quick sufficient.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a narrative tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
