Blacklist International survived a grueling opening day of the MPL Philippines Season 13 playoffs, taking down Minana EVOS and Fnatic Onic Philippines in the play-ins to advance to the upper bracket semifinals at SM Southmall on Thursday, May 23.

The Code Breakers showed resilience and unwavering resolve, first outlasting MNNE in the first round of the play-in with a 3-2 series win before dominating FNOP 3-1 to arrange an upper bracket clash with defending champion Falcons APBren.

Blacklist, playing its second series of the day, survived an opening game hiccup and went on to pick up three straight victories with Kenneth “Yue” Tadeo, Salic “Hadji” Imam and Edward “Edward” Dapadap leading the charge.

It was Yue who took charge in Game 2, executing a perfectly timed Eternal Guard ultimate from his Vexana pick, triggering a massive team fight which resulted in Blacklist scoring a four-man wipe to even the series.

Hadji then followed suit and enabled Blacklist’s composition in Game 3 behind his initiations with the roaming Edith pick. The Code Breakers went off to a hot 3-0 kill start and never looked back from there to take the 2-1 series.

Edward, on his Arlott pick, put on the finishing touches in Game 4, picking off Duane “Kelra” Pillas’ Claude in an 18-minute clash to help Blacklist secure the Lord objective and closeout the series.

Yue took the game MVP honors in Game 2 with a 2-1-11 KDA while Hadji had a 3-2-6 line in Game 3.

Earlier, it was also Yue who starred in the series clinching win over Minana EVOS after a stellar performance on the surprise Pharsa pick. Blacklist had a strong 4-0 start in the deciding game and took down all Minana’s outer turrets at the 12-minute mark with a 5-1 kill slate.

Yue finished with a spotless 5-0-4 line on the Pharsa in Game 5, helping Blacklist save some blushes after failing to close out the series in Game 4.