Preparing for the Aries Cup in Umamusume: Pretty Derby

April is underway and that means it is time to start training for the single Champions Meeting this month, the Aries Cup. Did you contribute to Smart Falcon’s Umadol numbers, by the way? Who knew that Smart Falcon’s dreams of Umadol success involved more fans than the entire population of the planet Earth? Well, anyway, we’ve got one race this month, and thankfully, it is a bit easier to deal with than last month’s Long Distance Pisces Cup, if only by the virtue of Mediums being slightly easier to train for in terms of stat caps and requirements. That doesn’t mean you can slack off too much, though, because you’ll still need to be training in Trackblazer in order to get the best possible Ace you can, so let’s go over how to get competitive while you’ve still got a week and change to prepare your trainees.

If you’re knew to Umamusume: Pretty Derby, we have a whole slew of guides that can help you out in getting started; even as a new player, you can absolutely try your best to compete in the Champions Meetings after you get the hang of Career Mode, Support Decks, and in particular, understanding the current Scenario that you’ll need to play, Trackblazer. We’ve also got guides about how PVP operates and can help you get orientated with what you should be focusing on and how to consider building a team of three. Now, on to the race of the month!

All Out War: The Aries Cup

The Aries Cup is the final Champions Meeting before the reset, and perhaps thankfully, it isn’t an exceptionally strange or even difficult race to train for, coming in at a very modest 2000m on a fairly simple track. The Aries Cup is run on Nakayama Turf at 2000m, qualifying for Medium, and run from the Right Inner Posts during Spring in Sunny Weather on Firm Conditions. Compared to the Pisces Cup, Aries Cup seems almost nostalgic for earlier tracks and fairly easy races to run, so you may wonder what the real challenge is going to be, and we’ll get to that in a bit. For now, let’s focus on the Green Skills you’re going to want.

Firm Conditions remains a great choice, and also one of the most available skills in the game; it is available on numerous Support Cards, such as Nishino Flower, King Halo, Narita Top Road, Super Creek, Winning Ticket, and the Team Sirius card. Just remember that if you use the Team Sirius card, you can’t train anyone that is IN Team Sirius, or use cards that contain any of those members. You can also get it from Nishino Flower herself, who just released in the game, so if you have the time to train her as a Parent or Grand-Parent, you may be able to easily pass on the skill that way. If you happen to have Narita Top Road’s SSR card, or can borrow it, she has the evolved version of this skill known as “Firm Course Monster”, which provides even greater benefits.

Nakayama Racecourse is kind of an odd one, but not impossible to get, however, if you happen to be training either version of Oguri Cap, she can easily learn the skill from an Career Event, which might make your life considerably easier than trying to use the cards that you can get it from; that said, if you’re attempting a Guts Deck, Yukino Bijin is a great Guts (or Wit) card that does have the skill.

Right-Handed is a little less available, and for Trackblazer, the most likely source of the skill that would be in your deck will be Fine Motion SSR Wit; otherwise, you might have to try and inherit it from a Parent, and you can find it on Matikanefukukitaru Full Armor, Satono Diamond, Fine Motion, and Ballroom Fuji Kiseki or Seiun Sky. Similarly limited is Spring Runner, which is only available on Power Inari One or Stamina Sakura Chiyono O, but can be inherited from Mejiro McQueen, Sakura Chiyono O, Ballroom Seiun Sky, Anime Teio, and Kitasan Black, making it much more likely you’ll obtain this skill from Spark than card.

Standard Distance is another fairly common skill, and primarily comes from Nishino Flower’s cards, as well as Kawakami Princess Power, El Condor Pasa Power, Eishin Flash Speed, Bamboo Memory Power, and Ines Fujin Wit. Sadly the cards that provide this aren’t great, and Nishino Flower Power is probably the best card in this pool. Finally, Sunny Days can be obtained from El Condor Pasa Power, Satono Diamond Stamina, Mejiro Dober Wit, and Hishi Akebono Guts; if you’re trying to get numerous Greens, you could look to run El Condor Pasa and target both Standard Distance and Sunny Days for maximum efficiency.

Trainees to Consider

Medium Distance races are no strangers to wide amounts of trainees, as it tends to be the highest concentration of A rank Umas in the game; you can thank that to the fact that Japan primarily runs and focuses on Medium distance races in the 2000~m variety, I suppose. That means that while you can use almost anyone you want, there are a few things to remember. Since you need to train in Trackblazer, you really want a Trainee that can run Miles and Mediums at the very least, and possibly Miles, Mediums, and Longs to get the most available G1 races and the best variety of races possible for your training targets. That does cut down the amount of trainees a bit, but not by a lot. For our list this time, I’m focusing on trainees that can both do very well in the Aries Cup AND will make your life a bit easier in Trackblazer:

Free to Play: You may already expect the options here, but you can do quite well with Daiwa Scarlet and Gold Ship, and you can consider Vodka. The Japanese results show us that Sakura Bakushin O and Haru Urara can also be somewhat competitive if you invest enough into them to make them so, but they may not be ideal and likely the effort could be better spent somewhere else.

Some Pulls: Some of the 2-stars that you can use (as long as you’ve promoted them to 3-stars at least) include Nice Nature (who you’re probably trying to run as a Debuffer), Matikanefukukitaru, Super Creek, and El Condor Pasa. These aren’t fantastic options, and the real stars in this category are Mejiro Ryan, Agnes Tachyon, or Grass Wonder; Agnes and Grass are looking to be used as Debuffers using the skill Dominator, so don’t get confused with thinking that they are viable as Aces.

Three Stars: This category is gigantic, because this is where most 3 Star trainees fall, so I’m going to just bring attention to a few that can do very well; if you are able to or want to try training someone you have I don’t mention, they’re probably an option! However, the best possible choices you can think of here are Christmas Oguri Cap, Oguri Cap, Seiun Sky, Valentine Bourbon, Mejiro Dober, Summer Maruzensky, New Years T.M. Opera O, Kitasan Black, Admire Vega, Narita Taishin, and Christmas Biwa Hayahide, just to name a few.

Christmas Oguri Cap is an interesting trainee. In the Japanese meta, she was absolutely dominant for most of her runs in Champions Meetings, but in Global Meta, she hasn’t been quite as dominant as one might expect; some of that may just be due to players already knowing what to expect or perhaps the Balance Patch back in November of 2025, but whatever the cause, this particular CM is Christmas Oguri Cap’s to take. Her Unique Skill is very easy to activate in this race, and she can overcome the Dominator Debuffers easily due to her multiple recovery skills and various other benefits. That said, while she is likely to be very strong, it really is hard to call as to whether or not she’s going to dominate like she did in Japan, so don’t feel like you don’t have a chance without her; Regular Oguri Cap can work really well too, and both are easy to train in Trackblazer, making them great choices for that reason.

Support Cards: Time to Get Your Thinking Cap

Aries Cup has fairly high stat requirements, mostly brought on by the shift in the stat meta by Trackblazer itself; you really have to approach the actual targets for the race to be competitive, because being below these (particularly Speed) is a recipe for losing the competition entirely. The general suggestion here is 1200 Speed, 750 Stamina, 1000 Power, 500~ Guts, and 1000 Wit. Yes, you read that right: 1000 Wit. Why? Because when the stats are likely to be very similar to comparable across all high level trainees, the most important thing that will determine success is going to be Skill Activations.

So, while older CMs might have asked you to stack Speed Cards or Stamina Cards, it might be surprising to see Stat stacking appear again, except this time as Wit Card stacking. Most decks are going to want to try 1 or 2 Speed (Something strong like Kitasan, Narita Top Road, or Matikanefukukitaru), A Power Card, and 3 Wit Cards, or you could try for the Guts Meta, which is 1 Speed, 3 Guts, and 2 Wit. Personally, I find Guts Meta is almost entirely gambling oriented, as you’re looking for huge high roll spikes during Summer Trainings and items to appear, but if it works, boy does it produce some shockingly high quality trainees. The benefit to Guts training is that it raises Speed, Power, and Guts, which can get you to the various targets you’ll be looking for while Stamina often can be trained through Sparks (such as splitting Power and Stamina) or taking occasional trainings in Stamina to ensure you hit at least 700. You can also consider using the Team Sirius card instead of one Wit Card in a 3 Wit deck, if you have access to it.

Fishing For Wins

Aries Cup is our last original Champions Meeting, which sounds wild to say; it really doesn’t seem like it has almost been an actual year since the game launched in Global, and even with the accelerated timeline, we really are nearing the actual first year anniversary; last year around this time I was never imagining I’d have been writing about this game still today, let alone at all. I hope you’ll give the Aries Cup a try and close out the first batch of Champions Meetings, because the reruns of the races that will be coming up are going to surprise you with how much you may have to relearn from the ground up! If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot them over to me at marcy@goonhammer.com, or drop by the Discord and ask me there!

Tags: umamusume | Uma Musume Pretty Derby