Blacklist International showed off their skills, painstakingly playing through nine games to survive the first day of the MPL PH Season 13 Playoffs.
headline images courtesy of MPL PH and ONIC PH
On the first day of the Mobile Legends Professional League’s Playoff Stage in the Philippines for Season 13, we would see a Play-In bracket kicking things off. This involved two best-of-five elimination series, with the first leading the winning team directly into another daunting matchup. While 
Blacklist International managed to secure what was quite a tough victory over 
Minana EVOS, their follow-up challenger would be 
FNATIC Onic PH – and the fatigue would surely have been getting to them.
Blacklist International survive nine straight games
Going into FNATIC Onic PH
vs
Blacklist International we saw the brilliance of FNOP, which we expected, taking a smooth victory without too much effort in game one. With Kelra and Escalera on the roster, the team had definitely shown some signs of dominance during the Regular Season, and it looked as though the ex-M3 World Champions were going to be down and out. However, that was the perfect time to strike, as OHEB’s Claude came into play. Over the next two games, the Blacklist which we had not seen for some time began to show, as they dominated their opponents across the map.
Interestingly in game four, with match point in hand, Yue was seen on the Nana, and Blacklist seemed unstoppable again. Right from the start, the team did not let their opponents have a way into the game, using the UBE strategy that they have become so well-known for to perfection. All FNOP could do was pick up the pieces from a few mistakes on Blacklist – but eventually they were overwhelmed.
With a 3-1 win, after a total of nine games on the first day of the MPL PH Season 13 playoffs, Blacklist would survive and move forward into yet another daunting series as they take on 
Falcons AP.Bren tomorrow. However, one saving grace is that a loss will no longer mean instant elimination, with the safety net of the lower bracket coming into play.
