Ho-Oh V: a Combo deck except Combo is only the backup plan

NOTICE: Ho-Oh (LST) is supposed to be Ho-Oh V from the upcoming Silver Tempest expansion.

Ho-Oh V reads as follows:

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Ho-Oh V // 230 HP // {C}
Basic Pokémon
{Ability} : Revival Flames - Once during your turn, if this card is in the discard pile, you may put this card onto your Bench. If you do, attach up to 4 basic Energy cards from your discard pile to this Pokémon. If you use this Ability, your turn ends.
{C}{C}{C}{C} : Rainbow Burn - 100+ - This attack does 30 more damage

NOTICE: Ho-Oh (LST) is supposed to be Ho-Oh V from the upcoming Silver Tempest expansion.

Ho-Oh V reads as follows:

—

Ho-Oh V // 230 HP // {C}
Basic Pokémon
{Ability} : Revival Flames - Once during your turn, if this card is in the discard pile, you may put this card onto your Bench. If you do, attach up to 4 basic Energy cards from your discard pile to this Pokémon. If you use this Ability, your turn ends.
{C}{C}{C}{C} : Rainbow Burn - 100+ - This attack does 30 more damage for each type of basic Energy attached to this Pokémon.

Weakness {L} x 2 // Resistance {F} -30 // Retreat Cost {C}{C}

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The goal is simple. On turn 1 going first, you will use Battle Compressor and discard-from-hand Items to discard Ho-Oh V and four different colors of Basic Energy.

It's difficult to mess this up since the deck is built to be churned through on turn 1 going first with Acro Bikes, Crobat, Dedenne, Ball cards, Trainers' Mail, and Comp Search. No Supporter draw necessary. Just find five cards and bin them.

After setting up utility Pokémon like Radiant Greninja and refreshing your hand, you will end your first turn by activating Revival Flames. Now it's important that Diancie is in your Active Spot at the end of this first turn. You don't want your opponent to Boss or Guzma out your Ho-Oh and KO it on their first turn going second. This is literally all Diancie does. There are many cards like it, but Diancie is the easiest to use. And I think Diancie is cute.

During your second turn going first, after cutting off your first turn with the Revival Flames, Ho-Oh begins to wreak havoc. With four Energies, Ho-Oh deals 220 damage with Rainbow Burn. This is enough to OHKO unevolved Eternatus V, Arceus V, and the upcoming Lugia V (which I suspect will see a lot of Expanded play). If you attach a fifth Energy during this second turn, you can hit for 250. With a Choice tool attached, Ho-Oh deals 280, and can OHKO ADP, Arceus VSTAR, Rowlet & Alolan Exeggutor, and Lugia VSTAR. VMAXes will still give some trouble, but I'll get to that.

The deck will likely struggle if going second, but the game plan is the same, this time you are sacrificing your first attack for Ho-Oh's ability. You will have to hope that Diancie can protect your Ho-Oh, but you will at least get to use a Supporter to speed up your discarding process.

The deck will also struggle with recovery. It's not exactly built for the long-game, and while Ho-Oh can Revival Flames a second time to instantly set back up, this essentially sacrifices a Prize as you offer up another Diancie to do so. You're really banking on this first attack being aggressive enough to throw the opponent off tempo.

Now what does the deck do against evolved VMAXes? You'll notice that a singleton Ninja Boy is in the decklist, this is borrowing from the old Ho-Oh-EX deck concept to turn the charged Ho-Oh V into an Amazing Rare Yveltal, which can KO any Pokémon without resistriction (okay maybe a few restrictions but basically you have to hope they don't have anti-Yveltal tech).

A huge upside I see for Ho-Oh V in both Standard and Expanded is its resilience. If Ho-Oh V is KOed, you can promote a Diancie or other single-prizer and Revival Flames again.

The toughest matchup will probably be Rowlet & Alolan Exeggutor / Turbo Vileplume. Both Disgusting Pollen and Irritating Pollen shut this deck down hard. All your Pokémon are Basics, and most of your Trainers are Items. If you fail to set up T1 against Exeggutor, you might lose. Your saving grace is that they can only Turbo out one Vileplume at a time. If you can kill their Exeggcutor T2 to prevent a full lock, you can then work on killing the Item locking Vileplume they will surely have evolved first (unless they're actually insane and go for the Basic one, in which case you'll need Guzma and have to hope for some mistakes on their part). Your two main options for this matchup are:

1. Concede.

2. Curl up in a ball and cry.

I personally recommend the first since it takes less time.

However, pretty much every other matchup can be winnable.

ADP can be obnoxious, but Ranger removes their GX and without taking a million prizes per KO (and their piddly unboosted damage being outpaced by your own), they simply fold to an angry chicken, no Yveltal required.

Eternatus decks (do those still exist?) have extremely high HP and high damage, but the Ninja Boy line for a Yveltal will take down the first Eternatus. And if they failed to produce a second Eternatus VMAX, they'll lose their precious Bench and the whole deck falls apart at that point (you're basically fighting Darkrais then, which you can deal with using Ho-Oh). Same goes for other VMAX decks like Shadow Rider (does THAT see any play anymore?), Coalossal (...), and Mew (really just assuming what's meta at this point).

I am only assuming that Lugia VSTAR will see play. Battle Compressor just makes that deck so much more consistent, and the twin Archeops can fetch DCE to easily set up two different Lugia in one turn. Lugia VSTAR can still easily KO Ho-Oh with a single Powerful {C} Energy, but you can still revenge kill Lugia with ease. Your best bet though is probably to kill a Lugia V before it evolves on your second turn going first, so that you're ahead on Prizes while you play keep up when they evolve the second one and do their thing. Consider running Path to the Peak? This shuts down your utility V and GX Pokémon (Greninja will still draw cards to make up for this), but shutting down Lugia's VSTAR Power is much more important.

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A card I couldn't find space for was the new Seal tool card (the good one). While I think it's a good card in this format and acts like a second copy of Computer Search, I keep finding it hard to find space for this card. (It might make Shadow Rider and the other stagnant VMAX decks better)

I do think the deck needs something else to it. The Ninja Boy / Yveltal line is a funny gimmick, but the deck needs another Pokémon that benefits from having every color of Energy in the deck. The angry chicken is strong enough to deal good damage on its own, but it needs a backup plan in case the chicken eats it and you suddenly have to take a turn off to Revival Flames.

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Changelog: Thorton replacing Ninja Boy. Thorton is much more consistent than Ninja. It's easier to dig for Yveltal to discard it than it is to keep it in your deck to fetch with Ninja Boy. Could possibly cut Rescue Stretcher because of this and replace it with a different card (maybe something that puts Energies from the discard pile into your hand, or something that recycles Tools, or simply an extra copy of Choice Belt/Band depending on meta).