Blacklist International is marching strong in the lower bracket of the M5 World Championships and the hometown bets are becoming more unpredictable thanks to their lineup’s flexibility.

That was what Blacklist former head coach and current coaching staff Kristoffer “Bon Chan” Ricaplaza pointed out after the team barged into the lower bracket semifinals following a commanding 3-1 win over Indonesia’s Geek Fam.

Bon Chan said the team are now more flexible to adjust their playstyle to their opponents, being able to field a more aggressive composition or just have an on objective-centric and counter engage type lineup just like their patented ‘UBE’ strat.

“Kaya namin laruin yung iba-iba naming playstyle. Dati we stick to one strat pero ngayon kung kailangan namin sabayan yung aggressiveness kaya namin magtransition into other team composition,” said Bon Chan who led Blacklist to two M-series Finals appearance in M3 and M4 before handing the reins to current head coach Aniel “Master the Basics” Jiandani.

“And siguro dala na rin ma magkaka age yung limang naglalaro ngayon kaya sobrang solid yung chemistry nila,” he added.

Much of the flexibility in the lineup was due to the addition of players like Renejay “Renejay” Barcase who can play hard setup tanks and utility-sustain roamers and Stephen “Sensui” Castillo who can utilize tanky jungle picks or assassin burst heroes.

Apart from playing sturdy tanks, Renejay’s development in using healing-type of heroes – a signature play style to the M3 world champs – gives the team a different options in draft.

“At first, Renejay didn't want to play healing heroes or support heroes until we taught him how to properly use it. Fortunately, he (grew to love) those heroes when he learned how to use them,” said Bon Chan.

That was specifically evident during the series when Renejay utilized Angela, Rafaela, Mathilda and Estes picks and went on to claim MVP citations in the 3-1 lower bracket QF win over Geek Fam.

“When the time comes that we need to transition into a hard tank, he can also do that because that was his specialty before he used the utility heroes,” he added.