Have you been craving fast, quick, short races that are all gas and nothing else? Well, if that’s the case, the next Champions Meeting is the one you’ve been waiting for: the very first Sprint distance Champions Meeting is here in the form of the Capricorn Cup! No longer do you need to worry about training multiple recovery skills and min-maxing for Long or Medium Distances and calculating stamina goals. This time, you are entirely going to want to focus on Speed, Power, and going as fast as Uma-ly possible! Well, sort of. Actually, it is a bit more complicated than that…

Before we get into the Capricorn Cup preparations and details, a quick reminder that we have a ton of guides available for you to take a look at for Umamusume: Pretty Derby here on Goonhammer, ranging from our guides about Career Modes, Support Decks, Inheritance Sparks, PVP in general, and much more; you can find our past guides on various races and how to help prep your trainees, and we also have a guide specifically for Sprint Distance that can help you get a good start on this particular race.

The Capricorn Cup: Finally, Sprints

The Capricorn Cup is a Sprint distance race (1200m) run from the Left during Winter in Snow on Soft ground. There’s a somewhat interesting mixture of Green Skills involved in this race, the first of which is that this is a Left-Handed Race for Winter Runners, but the snow on the ground means you will want to look for Wet Conditions and Snowy Days for your weather Greens; Standard Distance is also important here, because 1200 is a multiple of 400, which is helpful as Standard Distance is pretty easy to obtain, while some of the other skills above are a bit spread out among various cards, trainees, and events.

Sprints are known for being short and fast, and 1200 is nearly the shortest distance in the entire game, meaning that there is not a lot of leeway for things to go wrong. Ironically, this also means that you’ll need to be a bit more mindful of your skills than in previous Champions Meetings, and if you’ve been struggling in those due to the Wit Requirement of 600, this race is seriously going to test you there, as a single skill not activating when you need it will generally mean the end of your run before it had a chance to begin. The stat requirements here are also a little odd in comparison to other races: While you don’t need that much Stamina, well, wait till I tell you what you should be shooting for in terms of Wit! The general “ideal” Statline for the Capricorn cup is 1200 Speed, 450 Stamina, 900+ Power, 500 Guts, and a whopping 1200 Wit. Yes, you heard that right, this is the first race in which you are encouraged to have two stats as closed to maxed as possible. Now, if that sounds absolutely scary, the reality is that you can compete fairly successfully with 1200 Speed, 450 Stamina, 900+ Power, 500 Guts and 600 Wit or higher, but the more over 600 you can get the better. Again, this race is very brief, and gambling on your skills activating is going to essentially turn your races into coinflips, so the closer you get to 1200 wit, the more likely you are going to have your skills activate when you need them.

Bakushin Bakushin Bakushin Bakushin Bakushin Bakushin

CHOWA!!

Finally, the beloved idol of Sprints and early Umamusume scenarios gets her due: Front Runners are exceptionally strong in the Capricorn Cup, and the best one off the rip is Sakura Bakushin O, the default Sprinter you’re given when you start the game. Of course, there are a lot of other great options in this race, but don’t overlook the joy of training Sakura Bakushin O to be competitive! Her career is actually fairly simple and has few huge roadblocks that will derail you, she isn’t very moody, and if you’re become more seasoned than when you first started, you’ll find that she is going to blow through her own Career easier than when you first started for sure.

You can also set your sights on considering other Front Runners who will need more investment, namely Smart Falcon (you’ll need to get her to have A Turf) or even Silence Suzuka (and yes, you can consider trying a Runaway, but just remember that messes with your stat goals because of the Stamina needs). Running various other positions becomes far more difficult here, so expect the majority of competitors to be Front Runners or Pace Chasers; almost all the competitive Late Surgers and End Closers require numerous Spark investments and are competitive, but also require a lot of work/investment to make them that compared to the other positions, so just consider what type of trainees you want to run and how you want to build your team. If you enjoy a challenge, consider seeing if you can make a Sprint Narita Taishin! Just remember that there isn’t a lot of room for error.

Selecting Your Trainees

As mentioned above, one of the best trainees is Sakura Bakushin O, who all players have for free (and who should very likely have made it to 3 Star by now). There are a lot of other great options for you to think about, though, so here is a list of various trainees:

Starters Only: Sakura Baksuhin O (Front or Pace)

Some Pulls: Mayano Top Gun (Front or End), El Condor Pasa (Front or Pace), Air Groove or King Halo (Late for both)

3 Stars: Summer Maruzensky, Smart Falcon, Silence Suzuka, Curren Chan, Hishi Akebono, Oguri Cap, Halloween Super Creek, Wedding Mayano top Gun (Front or Pace)

You may notice that this list is actually kind of small, and that really is because of how Sprint meta is fairly small at the moment. Yes, you could try to get Hishi Amazon or Narita Taishin to work here, but most of the units that are going to be competitive (or were competitive in Japan) are pretty limited. This can actually work in your favor if you are feeling like your account has struggled in the past to compete due to the requirements of other races and bigger rosters of 3 star trainees; the best person in this race is Sakura Bakushin O, and most of the other competitive picks are easy to obtain 1 and 2 Star trainees, and even Oguri Cap (the original) is a free option you may have obtained from the selector ticket or free 3 star pulls back at launch. If you’re a new player starting now, this is an easy Champions Meeting to compete in due to the accessibility of the smaller and more focused roster!

But How Do You Get 1200 Wit?

One of the thing you likely noticed in our discussion above is the huge Wit requirement for this particular race. As a reminder, Wit is what determines skill activation (aside from any other requirements), and without high enough wit, your skills just won’t go off, and even with moderately okay Wit, your skills may not activate when you want them to; this can lead to some instances where your Ace runner seems highly competitive, but just can’t keep up with the competition once you get into the actual Champions Meeting. Unlike previous events, you’ll want to create a fairly lopsided deck that is primarily Wit cards, or some combination of Speed and Wit; this is where cards like Tazuna or Riko can come in handy as well to help supply stats like Guts and Stamina as well as Mood moderation. But an actual competitive deck here can be 2 Speed / 3 Wit / 1 Friend card, or 3 Speed 3 Wit Cards, which is a pretty unusual combination of cards for Support Decks if you’ve been keeping track of them over the months.

Groundwork

Tired of this skill yet?

One exception here is Smart Falcon Power SSR, which is the easiest way to obtain Groundwork, which is going to be extremely important for Front Runners more than ever before; if you have it, you may want to consider getting the card into your deck so you can ensure that you obtain the skill, or gamble on parents to help Spark the skill during your trainings; otherwise, you’ll be sorely disappointed in the performance of your Front Runner trainees when you get them to the race without Groundwork (and the requisite 3 early race skills). There isn’t a big difference in other positional decks, either, s they will all want High Speed and High Wit cards, but only Front Runners need Groundwork, so you can more easily relax if you don’t have that ability and can build a deck around other concepts.

Haru Urara Guts Card

Eveveryone's favorite pink horse, Haru's Guts card is a shockingly good stat stick.

Even though Riko isn’t a staple in decks, you do still want to train in Unity Cup, and she can be very helpful for Rushing Gale, so do consider using her if you don’t have Tazuna, or have a very well built Riko and you can have 2 Speed/3 Wit otherwise. Remember that Wit does actually train Speed when you select it, so although you may not realize it, you will still be training Speed quite a lot. You’ll also want to likely focus on Power and Stamina in your Inheritance Sparks and train them as needed during your 2 Summers, which should generally help you hit the fairly low Stamina/Guts requirement, but you may need to hope for the best on Power. Another very solid option in your deck as a flex is Guts Haru Urara, who provides a lot of great boosts and training bonuses, so don’t overlook her if you don’t have the Pal cards like Tazuna or Riko or don’t think your Speed/Wit cards are good enough on their own. Again, 1200 is the max, and 600 is the minimum, so as long a your deck can get you to 600+ you should be alright, but the closer to 1200 you get, the better your chances will be. 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