ECHO put on a show with its surprise Johnson-Kadita combo to keep Blacklist International winless through four games in the MPL Philippines Season 9 on Sunday, Feb. 27.
ECHO, which now improved to a clean 4-0 win-loss slate, took control of the match in Game 2 once Kurt “Kurttzy” Matira’s Johnson and Tristan “Yawi” Cabrera’s Kadita got their access to their ultimates.
The JS-Kadita combo, equipped with a double petrify spell, imposed huge problems to Blacklist as the duo of Kurttzy and Yawi provided the burst damage which allowed ECHO to dominate the team fights.
The ploy forced Blacklist to stay in its base, creating the space for Karltzy to get his farms uncontested evident in his whopping 1046 GPM ratio.
The M3 World Champions failed to find an answer to the combo as ECHO went for the death push to clinch the series win after a 20-6 domination of Blacklist in Game 2.
Karltzy finished with a 12-0-5 KDA while the Kurttzy and Yawi added 0-2-17 and 0-4-14 KDAs respectively.
It actually seemed like Blacklist was back to its winning form as it easily took control of the early game behind the efforts if its MVP trio of Hadji, Oheb and Edward in Game 1.
ECHO tried to battle back with the pick-offs from Yawi’s Jawhead but the Blacklist with its return to the patented UBE strat dominated every team fights.
An attempt to pick off 3martzy’s Gloo however spelled doom for Blacklist as it consumed all of its ultimates ono 3martzy and still failed to kill his Gloo. That created the opportunity for ECHO to go for a counter-initiation as Karltzy dashed his way on the Lancelot and took down Blacklist heroes one-by-one to score a triple kill
ECHO then went for the death push to secure Game 1 with a 13-13 comeback.