From team matchup, looks like roughly even to me in the sense that there is nothing on either team that the other person can't respond to. That's the best you could hope for from preview, anyway. xMarth lets MAggron take a +2 CC (stayed in first turn, I would assume, knowing banded wouldn't kill obviously and he OHKOs back with Slam) after letting Heracross set up an SD and having nothing appropriate to switch in from there.
Poor lead matchup leads MAero to instantly become a huge problem, if I were in Koko's seat I would think it had perfect matchup thereout, the only thing I'd be worried about really would be a Stun Spore from Whimsicott or a too-healthy Slowking, both don't pose a huge problem to the rest of his team though (Whims far more than pretty much any Slowking variant).
I wasn't convinced after Kyurem took the flamethrower that it was Scarf (later proves to be), interesting choice that I don't like terribly much as a mon, Kyurem's wallbreaking potential with Specs is simply so incredible I hate seeing it neutered. But, at least, it gives him counterplay to MAero and Hydrei from thereout, I guess. The game sort of plays out from this point as could be expected for a while, Gyara can't break Milotic no matter the set, so going Slowking just to get burned was really xMarth's only option. In return, he gets a burn on Hydrei himself, later revealed to be "unwanted" I guess because he had Twave, though I'm not sure it mattered that much overall.
t13 and t14 are nice on both sides, there was pretty much no chance Koko would send out a dragon move that turn so Kyurem was fine to bring in there. xMarth's double to Whims is a cute play, able to eat anything Hydrei would throw out or, more immediately, be able to pressure the Milotic a bit, or gain momentum U-Turning. Koko, for his part, shows the benefit of having redundant checks to things and uses the opportunity to get rocks.
t 24 - 26 received a bit of chatter in the smogtours room. From what I could tell, the Reuni Recover on King's EP was conditioning so that it would look like he was gaging the health Reuni would be at the following turn, were he to kill King with Psychic. Marth falls for the bait and Sludge Waves on a switch to Cobalion, which has a 30% chance to get rid of King the following turns without dying, but itself isn't super necessary for the rest of the game. The smogtours chat suggested triple switching into Hydreigon on King's Earth Power from there, proving once again that it's pretty easy to call plays after they've already happened, and unfortunately only the actual players in the match don't have the gift of seeing the future.
Again, the game picks up playing just as you'd otherwise expect from this point. I wouldv'e misplayed if I were in Koko's shoes on t30 by going for CM, but it'd be hard to lose from there. Nothing else really too crazy happens from afterwards, crit / para nonsense on Reuni maybe could've had some sort of an issue, but Slowking was going to die before the rest of Koko's team regardless, I dunno. Don't really see a way for Marth to pull himself back into that match around mid-match time, but if anyone else does see it please elaborate.
Koko's team looks really well built to me, Flamethrower LO Hydreigon being a nice choice to dissuade the ever-present Whimsicott xMarth runs. Milotic proves again to be a solid meta-choice, I'll leave it at that for now I guess but it's a really cool mon.
xMarth's teams are always solid - I'll definitely say that, but it appears that koko was prepared for his archetype of build (MAggron, Whimsicott, grounded poison, bulky setup water) and had appropriate countermeasures. While, if this were any random battle, I'd think that there was an even matchup (as said above) the small details of the teams show the important of preparation again I guess.
