After a series of PVP events bouncing back and forth between Mile and Medium distance, the next Champions Meeting on the docket brings the race back to Long distance for the first time since Gemini Cup. The accelerated schedule continues, and either for better or worse, the constant challenge of meeting new PVP goals continues, so we’ve got a new guide to help get you prepared for the Libra Cup sometime into the first weeks of December, so you should have a little time to do your holiday shopping before preparing for Umamusume: Pretty Derby trainings.

If you’re new to Umamusume: Pretty Derby, we’ve got a series of guides that can really help you out, whether you’re looking for help learning the game through Career Mode, how Inheritances Work, what PVP even is, the value of a Support Deck and more, we’ve got guides that can support you through just about anything the game can currently throw your way. While Champions Meetings are somewhat individual challenges, a lot of the foundations set in our previous guide for the Long Distance Gemini cup can help you get a sense of what you should be trying to accomplish and how best to do so as you approach the Libra Cup.

The Libra Cup: A Long Distance Land of Gold

The Libra Cup is our return to Long Distance in PVP, and while it isn’t quite as long as the Gemini Cup was at 3200 meters, it is still quite the distance at 3000! For those of you who competed in the Gemini Cup, you know this already means that Libra is more about Stamina than it is about Speed, because if your trainee can’t go the distance, then it doesn’t matter how fast they can potentially get. The Libra Cup is a 3000m race on Kyoto Turf run on the Right Outer Posts during Fall in Sunny Conditions on Firm ground. If this is your first Champion Meeting, these bold words are key terms that help determine the type of runners that are best suited for this challenge, but also the types of Green Skills that you will either want to hunt down or at least consider for your trainees to get an extra boost to their performance during the race. An important note is that Libra is a 3000m race, meaning that if you’re relying on Green Skills, you will need to consider tracking down Non-Standard Distance, and that if you are re-using trainees from the Gemini Cup, you’ll potentially be down a skill from other competitors.

An interesting quirk about this race is that there are two Uphill segments, particularly one right before the end of the race, meaning that you may want to look for the skills Highlander and/or if you’re running a Late Surger, 1,500,00 CC and recovery skills Moxie and the golden version Restless as possible track related staples, although these are less important than other Gold Recovery skills you might select like Swinging Maestro; in general, you mostly want to note the Uphill because it drains stamina faster than flat turf, and in an already long race, every bit of Stamina and Guts counts for the final stretch of the race.

Anything but (not) Training: Gold Ship’s Time to Shine Again

Gold Ship will always dominate Long races, and she's also fairly easy to train.

Perhaps early participants in Champions Meeting events may remember a very specific trainee dominating the majority of the events: Gold Ship, a free to play accessible trainee who consistently put up top placements and easily sailed to victory over even “expensive” trainees like Narita Taishin. A lot of that comes down to the fact that Gold Ship comes with an inherent 20% Stamina growth and 10% Power Growth, making it very easy for her to maintain high stats across Speed, Stamina, and Power, while also having a kit that is generally self-sustaining across speed and recovery skills. Her Unique, Anchors Aweight, helps her speed up from the back of the race during the middle of it, pushing her from her spot as an End Closer to somewhere closer to the middle of the pack, and her innate skill Uma Stan makes her faster when she is near other racers; after the November balance update, this means that Gold Ship can easily rocket from the back of the race to the front of it, eclipsing racers who are likely not prepared for her to move up and take space so quickly.

She can even provide herself some solid recovery in the skill Go-Home Specialist, a recovery skill that activates on a downhill slope, which Kyoto does possess following the 2 up-hill segments and preceding the final spurt of the race. Combining Go-Home Specialist with 2 other Gold Recovery skills like Swinging Maestro and the now buffed Breath of Fresh Air means that Gold Ship can also rely on just having one Support Card in her deck to provide her with a Recovery Skill. This is a fairly big shift in terms of investment from other races, which for the last few months have mostly favored high investment (in both money, carats, or time) trainees like Summer Maruzensky or Seiun Sky, instead placing much of the ability to do very well in this meeting on a trainee that every player has access to, and by this point in the game’s lifecycle, if you have been playing since launch or even for a short amount of time, likely have a very competitive Gold Ship waiting for you to train her.

If you’re considering using Gold Ship this time around, you can shoot for a competitive build by having her inherit either Power or Stamina (or alternatively, splitting it if you don’t have the parental depth for 2 9 Star parents in a single stat), and run a deck that is either 3 Speed, Riko, 1 Power and 1 Stamina (Super Creek), or try 3 Speed, Riko, and 2 Power, with one of them being Power Rice Shower (who gives Swinging Maestro). Because Gold Ship already has such high Stamina growth, Power Rice Shower is an excellent option to gain Swinging Maestro from, because you won’t need to run a Stamina card and are unlikely to train a lot in Stamina to get much benefit from her. You’ll also want to go for “Team Carrot” during Unity Cup runs to obtain the skill No Stopping Me!, as well as looking for the skill Straightaway Spurt to give Gold Ship.

Fly in to the Danger Zone: Mayano Top Gun

Top Gun's latest career update allows her to select 1 of four skills, making her extremely versatile. You'll just need to inherit End A.

Another fairly strong and very accessible trainee for this race is Mayano Top Gun, who has been fairly competitive in most Champions Meetings so far, but has never really had a chance to truly shine in comparison to many of the other trainees that are available; even in some of the events, her alternative version, Wedding Mayano, was the better choice. Due to the Balance update, however, Mayano Top Gun got a fairly big boost to her ability to be competitive thanks to Shapeshifter during her career. Breath of Fresh Air is a free Gold recovery skill that helps alleviate some of the pressure of having to learn multiple recovery skills from just support cards. The Fruits of My Labor is an event in Top Gun’s career in which she can gain access to skills that match different racing styles, those being Final Push, Head-On, Slick Surge, and Straightaway Spurt. Because Top Gun is able to get No Stopping Me!, Straightaway Spurt, and Breath of Fresh Air just innately and from her own career run, that means that the rest of the skills you need to “hunt” for are pretty much just Swinging Maestro and other “good” skills like Professor of Curvature and beneficial Green Skills.

Although she can learn any of those skills and run very competitively at various positions, Mayano is going to really do well from the back of the race here if you want to use her (although you can opt to learn Head-On if you’re trying to run her further up the field). It is fairly competitive to run 3 End Closers / Late Surgers in this Champions Meeting, so you could absolutely run Gold Ship, Mayano Top Gun, and a third horse of your choice towards the back and expect to get very good results.

Support Deck Suggestions

If you're training an End Closer, you want this card in your deck.

Long races put a lot of emphasis on Stamina over Speed, and while you are still going to want as much (if not max) speed, Stamina is going to be incredibly important due to the grueling distance of the race and the predominant nature of debuffers in Global Umamusume; even in races in which debuffers are not overly impactful, I’ve found that Global players LOVE to play debuffers, meaning that you sometimes have to calculate your Stamina a bit higher than normal, or at least ensure that you are hitting Stamina/Guts and Recovery skill needs to shake off the debuffs. Of course the benefit of Debuffer prevalence in Global is that most players you encounter that use them are running (at best) 2 Aces or 1, and that means that having a prepared team that can shrug off debuffs easily will generally result in great performance for you and underwhelming results for them.

To ensure the best possible results in training your Aces, you are very likely going to want to run a deck that has 3 Speed, Riko, and then either Stamina or Power depending on the skills you want. A fairly standard deck for trainees who don’t have 20% Stamina growth is to run Riko and Super Creek for Stamina/Swinging Maestro. If your trainee gains Stamina easily, however, you may want to leave Riko as your only “Stamina” card and then utilize Power cards to help build that stat up as well.

Riko Kashimoto

Get ready to see a lot of this lady.

If there’s a little confusion on what I mean by using Riko for “Stamina”, that’s because although Riko Kashimoto is a Friend card, she primarily provides Stamina growth during her events and encounters in a career, and quite a lot of it. Riko as your only Stamina card (or alongside Super Creek for Swinging Maestro) is often more than enough if you take Stamina Sparks from your parents. If you do, you can usually run 3 Speed, Riko, and 2 Power, and as mentioned above with Gold Ship, you can even consider using Power Rice Shower to provide Swinging Maestro to you and growing your Power stat.

Some other options are to run 2 Speed, Riko, Haru Urara Guts, and then Stamina or Power as you see fit, or alternatively swap out Haru Urara for a Wit card if you are worried about energy recovery in your career OR if the Wit card has green skills you really want to obtain. The statline for a Long race is generally (at this stage of the game) 1000+ Speed, 1200 Stamina, 900~1000 Power, 400~500 Guts, and 400 Wit minimum, which is a huge amount of stats that Unity Cup DOES make possible but also makes it increasingly taxing for “good” or “bad” runs to run on a razor’s edge of good friendship training rolls.

Selecting Your Trainees

Since this is a Long Distance race, some of the previously dominant trainees are going to struggle quite a bit. You will likely see some people still opting for Front Runners, but Front Runners are an increasing disadvantage in Long races due to the Stamina requirements. That said, there are decent choices in every position and almost every option of player investment. Here are some general suggestions for trainees you can use in the Libra Cup:

Starters Only: Gold Ship, Vodka

Some Pulls: Agnes Tachyon, Super Creek, Mayano Top Gun, Nice Nature (debuff)

3 Stars: Narita Taishin, Manhattan Cafe (currently unreleased), Special Week, Silence Suzuka, Seiun Sky

At Potential 5, Narita Taishin is a force to be reckoned with in Long races.

Although she isn’t out yet, Manhattan Cafe makes an appearance in this Champions Meeting as the unit that will release around the time that training/registration is nearing a peak, but if you’d like to consider pulling her for the event, she can perform extremely well if you opt to do so, but the reminder is always there that you can succeed without worrying about having the “Right” trainees and instead training your racers correctly; of course, if you are the type to care about favorite over meta, then you can do whatever you want, as long as your trainee has Long A!

If you’re wondering why Summer Maruzenzky isn’t here, a lot of that is because Front Runners suffer from the long straightaway that closes out Libra Cup, meaning that Front Runners can’t benefit from Angling and Scheming inheritance; Seiun Sky can still do well, but those who rely on her inheritance suffer a lot here.

Parents, Sparks, and Skills for Success

Speed is still the easiest/most beneficial stat to train through your career runs, so generally for inheritance sparks you’re going to want to focus on either Stamina, Power, or a spread of the two, mostly depending on how your trainee grows innately. For example, Gold Ship’s innate 20% Stamina means she could inherit Stamina from her parents and then touch the stat very little during training and still (possibly, rng matters) arrive at numbers that are more than sufficient for the race. Alternatively, you could opt to inherit Power so that your needs for Stamina and Power are a little more spread out and then take advantage of what is offered through your trainings, particularly in Summer.

There is the important issue of remembering that you are going to need at least 400 Guts and 400 Wit, which are likely going to be boosted through Summer training (for Guts) or though off days for Wit, but you never want to inherit either of these as sparks. Instead, focus on hitting 1200 Stamina in whatever way is easiest for your trainee, and then focus on Speed second. Power is important, but if your trainee does not get Stamina growth inherently, you may want to take Power Sparks and then train Stamina and Speed as your primary two focuses in the career. Although Unity Cup has raised the ability to hit higher numbers across the board, it still won’t be possible to obtain 1000+ in Speed/Power/Stamina through training alone in a career run, even with the best possible outcomes.

As for Skills, since End Closers are so prevalent, skills like Let’s Pump Some Iron, Triumphant Pulse, and even Rudolf’s Behold Thy Emperor’s Divine Might are great picks. Also, while Front Runners aren’t as prevalent, if you are running one, you’re still going to want Groundwork and possible Angling and Scheming, just know that you may also need to supply some extra skills to help them out; Mejiro McQueen’s Duty of Dignity Calls is a great option to look for here too, or to take on your Seiun Sky.

Approaching the End of the (Real) Year

We’re coming in on the end of 2025, but for Umamusume, we’re really only in “October” of the first year of release! That means that you’ll be seeing some events happening in odd orders, such as the Halloween event and units, and Christmas Oguri is very likely arriving just in time for Valentine’s Day, but from a gameplay perspective, the Unity Cup meta is currently here to stay for a while longer. The next scenario, Make a New Track, is likely to be arriving sometime around February, along with the “First Year” Anniversary, so for now if you’re settled with Unity Cup you should be able to consistently turn out great trainees at this point 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!

Tags: umamusume | Uma Musume Pretty Derby