April is here, spring has sprung, and Trackblazer has now been around for almost an entire month, meaning that some of the confusion and drama of Umamusume Pretty Derby has calmed for a bit. How did you end up doing on the Pisces Cup, dear readers? If you want to say “not well,” that’s fine; it was certainly one of the most grueling Champions Meetings we’ve had so far, and the domination of extremely dedicated and whale competitors certainly made it one to be remembered for those who are playing on budgets or with limited time on their hands. Thankfully, April is a much calmer month for the game, meaning that you can really take some time to build up a good roster of Trackblazer Era parents, work on some Aces for a new Champions Meeting, and also partake in a few events for the rewards.

Champions Meeting: The Aries Cup

Unlike previous months, the schedule for Champions Meetings is pretty calm in April. The current scheduled start of the Aries cup is on April 20 according to Cygames, meaning that you’ve got most of the entire month to prepare for this race. We’ll be talking about it in more depth soon, but the basics you need to know for Aries Cup is that it is a Medium length race (2000m) run during Spring in Sunny Weather and on Firm Conditions in Nakayama on Turf. If you found the Pisces Cup punishing, Aries Cup will be quite a bit easier as the Stamina requirement is greatly reduced, and most players should be able to put together a competitive team of trainees to challenge the race with if you’ve gotten the hang of Trackblazer. It may sound strange, but take a breather and enjoy the Aries Cup, since there’s no need to rush or feel pressured to compete in numerous races this month and the one we are running is a fair shout easier than the last one; you may even find you might have some suitable trainees already just from trying Trackblazer.

New Support Cards

Although there’s only one race this month, we also have a lot of new Support Cards on the Horizon. Some of them have a new mechanic that boosts certain abilities based on the types of cards in your Support Deck, which will become a more important mechanic further down the line in the game, but cards such as Ballroom Symboli Rudolf are the first to introduce the idea of varied deck construction. As you may have started to learn from Trackblazer, deck building in the newer scenarios of Umamusume move away from the Stat Stacking (Such as 3 Speed) decks of the earlier Scenarios, for better or worse. On one hand, it is better to encourage players to have more varied decks and feel like the Support Decks don’t just revolve around maxing one particular skill, but the construction of effective decks gets somewhat more restrictive because the “best in slot” cards start to become much more noticeable and pronounced; for example, the SR Guts Admire Vega card clears even certain SSR cards, while Narita Top Road’s Speed Card stops being useful once Trackblazer is over.

A shame this card is mid, given the art.

Unfortunately, while there are a lot of new cards this month, almost none of them are worth your Carats. There are some good cards in this month but many of them are going to fall into “You should just borrow this” territory, unless you happen to be a whale or ultra collector who is dedicated to having cards (A strategy I do not, really, recommend). Symboli Rudolf and Sirius Symboli’s Extremely Straight And Not at All Homosexual cards for the Ballroom event have some great art, but sadly nothing else that makes them worth trying to pull or MLB. The most important cards this month are the new Daiwa Scarlet card, but this is certainly one you could settle on borrowing, and Mr. CB’s Wit card is very good, and is perhaps the most debatable one to pull for if you feel like you are lacking in strong Wit cards like Fine Motion. I did want to give a shoutout to the event card you get for SSR Speed Air Shakur, which is a very good card, and importantly, free, so be sure not to miss it during the ballroom event. You can ignore pretty much every other card coming up this month.

Same thing here.

There is also the Team Sirius card, another Freebie, which is actually an excellent card that can be slotted into a lot of decks, but does have one particular quirk; as you may be aware, Support Cards cannot be used for trainees with the same name, and Team Sirius’ card is no different, except in the fact that it blocks off your ability to train *six* different trainees: Mejiro McQueen, Special Week, Rice Shower, Winning Ticket, Silence Suzuka, and Narita Brian. This also means that you cannot use any of the Support Cards that match those trainees, and there are some very good cards you may lose access to if you choose to use it. That said, if you don’t need to use those cards or want to train any of those six, this is a great card to consider as it has some unique skills you can’t find anywhere else, particularly “Best in Japan”, which is great for Long runners.

New Trainees: Nishino Flower and Nastier Nature

April also has a new handful of trainees, which comes with the caveat that you should always pull for a trainee if they are your favorite character or design. After all, what is the point of playing the game if you don’t get to play as who you want? There is also the fact that trainees do sometimes have a slight edge on one another, but in most cases, trainees don’t matter nearly as much as their trainings, parents, and career runs. That being said, this month does have some standout trainees that are worth considering depending on what you’re looking for and what you think you need. The first ones up are Ballroom Seiun Sky and Fuji Kiseki, both of whom are pretty good but nothing particularly stellar. Seiun Sky’s Alt is somewhat odd because Front Runners are going to want things from both versions of Seiun Sky (Angling x Scheming from the original, but Ballroom Seiun makes for an excellent parent). If you can, find someone who has a very good Seiun Sky Veteran and use her to train your own Seiun Sky parent, and work on creating a particularly strong Front Runner.

Fuji Kiseki is about as good as her original version, with a few different skills but overall nothing that makes her better or worse than the OG Fuji Kiseki; personally, I think the dress is a visual downgrade, but that’s just my own choices manifesting there. If you like Fuji and missed the original or just really like this design, you can’t go wrong, but she’s not a must get and you won’t be hurting without her if you have a fairly developed roster elsewhere; remember, there aren’t any limited trainees yet in Global, so if you don’t get someone on their debut banner, you’re still likely to have them pop out whenever you’re least expecting it on a banner further down the line.

Nishino Flower is the first standout trainee this month, although not just for her own power as a trainee. No, Nishino Flower is notable because she is an exceptional parent Uma, and still in Japan today you’ll find Nishino Flower as a parent Uma. She is that good, and if you’re the type to want to invest into a stronger Parent roster for your trainees, you should consider trying to snag Nishino Flower from her banner this month. She’s a very good Sprint/Mile trainee, which there really haven’t been many in that particular category in some time (and even amongst those, she’s quite far ahead of the rest), but her unique skill Budding Blossom is extremely useful: “If the User is engaged in a challenge on a Mid-Race Corner, increase acceleration when well-positioned late-race at least halfway through the final corner”. As Nishino Flower is often a Pace parent, it isn’t very hard for your trainee to be challenging, and as skills like Angling x Scheming prove, final corner acceleration is always a considerably strong ability. She also comes with skills like Firm Conditions, Straightaway Adept, Updrafters and Head-On, meaning that she can easily pass on numerous good skills to other trainees.

The other trainees this month include Yaeno Muteki, who I will mostly offer is worth it if you like her aesthetics, and the cheerleading alts for Nice Nature and King Halo. Both of these versions of the characters are exceptionally solid, with Cheerleader Nice Nature becoming the dominant debuff racer in the game (sorry for your fate, queen). She’s great to run as a debuffer and as a debuff parent, so if you want to strengthen your debuffing game, consider Cheer Nice Nature; if you like King Halo, Cheer King Halo is an upgraded version of the original and works a bit more consistently than the baseline King Halo does. Finally, Ines Fujin finally makes her debut as a trainee, and she’s considerably competitive. She’s good at Mile and Medium and can be made competitive in Long with some sparks, making her strong for Trackblazer, and she has two unique skills that are interesting (and one very good): an Uphill recovery skill and another that makes her faster while also debuffing other competitors. If you’re looking for a trainee that can be very strong in many races and will have a long career tail, Ines Fujin is perhaps a great choice if you skip Nishino Flower.

Looking Towards May

April is a busy month for events, but there isn’t a ton of other things going on in the game, which is actually a trend that will continue into May. Since Trackblazer just landed for us in Global, we’ve got a few more months to go before we have to worry about the next Scenario, but that also means that your primary objective is going to be saving up carats for strong upcoming banners and potentially trainees you are really excited to see. The biggest thing of note is that May will bring about the rerun of Taurus Cup, meaning that the very first Champions Meeting will soon reappear but with Trackblazer stat expectations, so don’t expect your previous trainees to be as competitive. Until then, we’ll be focusing on the Aries Cup coming up but if you have any questions, please leave us comments down below, drop by the Goonhammer Discord if you’re a Patron, or even email me at marcy@goonhammer.com! Until then, see you out on the track!

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Tags: umamusume | Uma Musume Pretty Derby