The crown is back to its rightful owners.
Blacklist International successfully reclaimed the MPL Philippines throne with a rousing 4-2 victory over ECHO in the Season 10 Grand Finals at the Blue Leaf Cosmopolitan on Sunday, Oct. 23.
Down 2-1, Edward “EDWARD” Dapadap took charge in the last three victories of MPL Season 7 and 8 champions as his superb Benedetta, Uranus and Paquito plays lifted his team back to the apex of the MPL Philippines – the team’s third title in the last four seasons.
Not letting themselves fall to a 1-3 hole were the two-time MPL champions as Edward took charge in Game 4 to score the equalizer. The activity of the Season 7 finals MVP on his Benedetta disrupted the rotation from ECHO, allowing Oheb’s Brodie to get the space he needed to quickly reach his power spike.
With OhmyV33nus also dictating the tempo of the team fights with a whopping 1-2-26 line on her Mathilda, Edward unleashed a 5-1-8 KDA while Oheb added an 8-2-6 line.
Game 5 then saw a much tighter contest as compared to the first four matches but Blacklist managed to come out victorious behind Hadji's stellar performance on the Pharsa, highlighted by a Maniac at the seven-minute mark of the game.
Blacklist steamrolled from there as Hadji went untouchable, dealing heavy damage to ECHO from afar to score an 8-1-9 tally while OhmyV33nus’ setups worked wonders for Blacklist after scattering 1-2-26 line.
Smelling the scent of victory, Blacklist went on to dominate ECHO in Game 5 thanks to a long Lord dance which started at the nine-minute mark before making the decisive engagement that took down three heroes for ECHO.
With only two heroes left, Blacklist went on for the championship push to close out the series.
The first two games were a battle of drafting wits between the two coaches with Blacklist utilizing a surprise jungle Valentina pick in Game 1 but ECHO answered back with a roaming Valir pick to counter the double-sustain lineup of Blacklist in the second game
The Valentina pick seemingly caught ECHO off-guard as everything fell into place in the series opener for Blacklist as Wise stole either Karltzy’s Akai ultimate or Sanji’s Pharsa, wreakinh havoc with a perfect 7-0-5 KDA while Oheb added a neat 3-0-6 tally on Claude.
The pick-off centered lineup of ECHO anchored on the roaming Kadita pick from Yawi was completely neutralized by the three purify spells on Blacklist core heroes.
ECHO threw its own punch in the second game when it also picked a roaming Valir to combine with a midlane Lylia to nullify the double-sustain lineup of Blacklist anchored on the Faramis and Estes.
The slow and the continuous magic damage from ECHO punished Blacklist heroes in every team fight, allowing the second seed to cruise to a wire-to-wire 10-3 win. Yawi set the tone with a 11-8 line on the Valir while Karltzy reigned in the jungle battle with a 3-0-5 line on the Barats.
ECHO’s train rammed to the M3 World Champions in Game 3 with Sanford on the Grock and Yawi on the roaming Jawhead providing the setups. The relentless poke from Sanji’s Valentina also imposed problems against Blacklist, all of which, howeve, went for naught as that was the last victory ECHO could get from Blacklist