It may seem a little strange to look into the future of 2026, but time marches on and so do Champions Meetings, with Scorpio Cup looming on the horizon as the first PVP event of the year. The Libra Cup is currently ongoing, and while it is one of the more grueling matches to end the year with, Scorpio presents some interesting and, frankly, difficult challenges of its own to kick off the new year with. Before we get into that, though, we’ll also briefly discuss some upcoming banners and strategy about what you should or shouldn’t be saving your carats for!

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 Medium Distance Leo 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 Scorpio Cup.

The Scorpio Cup: A Short Medium Rain

The Scorpio Cup is a Medium distance race (2000m) in Tokyo run from the Left in Fall with Rainy Weather and Soft Conditions. As we’ve established in previous articles, these details are important to note for Green skills, but also for the type of race you can expect, and as mentioned. The Scorpio Cup is the very first soft, rainy Champions Meeting, meaning that it already has a few odd things going for it, but something else that might stand out is that while it is Medium, it is actually a shorter race than others. The poor conditions will also impose a fairly annoying Power penalty on racers, and the fact that it is far shorter than other Medium races means that certain abilities, like Straightaway Spurt on End Closers, will be far less useful than other races.

Another issue is that the final leg of Scorpio begins on an Uphill and has a very short final straight, meaning that uphill skills like Highlander are also not only unhelpful, but might actually be net negatives, as their possible activation can lead to bad timing, or simply just using SP on unhelpful skills. Even if you don’t look to get Green skills for Groundwork, it may be valuable to track them down to help negate the Power debuff from the conditions, or ensure that your trainee has extra power than you might normally look for in a Medium race like this. This also means that most positions are viable in this race, which is quite a nice change from Long distance races in which primarily End Closers and Late Surgers dominate.

Before Training: What To Use Carats On (or Save)

Before Scorpio Cup arrives, Global will get the second run of a Kitasan Black focused support card banner, and after Scorpio Cup (or potentially during it), Global will see the release of Christmas Oguri Cap. One of the early mistakes of the Global release of Umamusume was a panic over Kitasan Black, and the fact that without her card at MLB, your account was useless. While it is true that MLB Kitasan Black is the current best card in the game (specifically for Speed but almost in general), the accelerated speed of Global greatly shortens how long the card is “that good”. The biggest reason for this is the upcoming Scenario “Make a New Track”, in which Kitasan not only stops being so dominantly needed, but also begins to gain competition and even replacement by other SSR cards like Narita Top Road. That said, An MLB Kitasan Black is still an extremely useful and long-lived card that will remain useful and should be some form of priority. If you have been saving Carats to get copies of the card, then pulling on her upcoming banner is very likely a good idea, especially if you are able to guarantee a copy at 30k Carats. Yes, 30k is a lot, but that’s the “guarantee” point in Umamusume, and something to consider when saving up.

Kitasan Black Speed Card

The gold standard card is getting a rerun soon.

If you either don’t care or don’t want to chase Kitasan Black (valid), then the next banner to consider might be Christmas Oguri Cap, which will arrive sometime in early January, probably around the time the Scorpio Cup starts. Christmas Oguri is notoriously considered one of the best units to ever hit the game in the Japanese release of the game, with a unique skill that activates based off of numerous healing skill activations, and like base Oguri Cap, she is usable in almost any distance but Sprint without much effort, and on both Turf and Dirt with ease. She’s incredibly valuable to the Make a New Track scenario, but she’s also extremely useful in most PVP matches. If you’re not going to pull for Kitasan for any reason, then saving up for Christmas Oguri is a very good option; that said, she may release a little too late to be trained in time for Scorpio Cup unless you are deeply invested in getting her race-ready in a day or two, but she is certainly worth obtaining if you need or want her.

In either case, it is very important to remember that the Umamusume economy is always slightly stingy. 30k is a hard pity line to cross, and saving up 30k in short amounts of time is difficult, as is just buying 30k without having extremely deep pockets (and even then is almost never worth the investment of real money, and if you had the money to spend, you don’t need this guide!). So, saving is also a very valid option that will never actually let you down; always having enough to hit pity on banners or even saving up for multiple copies of an SSR on release is absolutely a good strategy.

Setting the Pace

The 2000m distance of Scorpio cup presents a few interesting shake-ups to the meta, in that there are quite a few viable Styles for Scorpio Cup. Of them, Pace Chasers have a great chance to steal the show due to the fact that the shorter distance of the race lowers some of the Stamina penalty, but also allows them to compete against Front Runners and back field racers like Gold Ship and Narita Taishin. Because Runaway Silence Suzuka debuffers could exist, as well as other positional debuffers like Nice Nature, Air Groove or Agnes Tachyon, Pace Chasers can also take advantage of some of the easier to obtain recovery skills like Gourmand to help round out their skills and shrug off debuffs.

Because of the November balance patch, many Pace Chasers are also far more viable than before also, meaning that the amount of possible trainees to use is far wider than before (and, with the continued expansion of new trainees, that’s good!). There’s also never really anything wrong with running numerous Pace Chasers, and this particular event will see them thrive well, which is also helpful in the sense that numerous trainees are very good at Pace and can all be trained as Aces here. Some particularly good options are Meisho Doto, Mayano Top Gun, Taiki Shuttle (if you can make her A Medium) and Oguri Cap.

Support Deck Suggestions

When it comes to Support Deck options, the variety you can utilize tends to be mostly determined by what cards you have at MLB, but also what you need from them. Speed is still the best stat to stack, and you’ll want to get 1200 Speed, so cards like MLB Kitasan Black and another good Speed card is a solid basis for a training deck. MLB R Riko or LB1 SSR Riko will be a very good stat stick for Stamina (as well as helping you get skills like No Stopping Me! and also getting better results in your scenario runs), and may allow you to choose between SSR Super Creek or SSR Rice Shower for access to Swinging Maestro. Swinging remains the best recovery skill in the game, although Breath of Fresh Air and Gourmand (For Pace Chasers) are also still good.

Riko Kashimoto

Riko's benefits to your deck essentially give you a Stamina card (and sort of guts) with a lot of other great boosts, so don't worry about her 'eating' a spot.

Mediums do require fairly high Stamina, so Riko is a great choice to help you grow your Stamina Stat, but the poor conditions of the race track will also mean you want good amounts of Power. This means that you can also make a choice in your deck on Stamina or Power cards to compliment your stats based on what sparks you plan to take, and what you have. A deck of 2-3 SPD, Riko, 2 STA or PWR and/or a WIT card will likely help you out. It is also important to consider what skills you want and what stats you really need to grow; since SPD is the most important here, you’ll want to prioritize that, and you may want to obtain your PWR or STA from Sparks to flush out your stats. Remember that you do need to hit about 400 Guts and 400 Wit, but there’s no real use for Guts unless your best MLB card is Haru Urara’s Guts card, which might look like 3 SPD, Riko, Guts Haru, and STA/PWR for Super Creek or Rice Shower.

Selecting Your Trainees

One of the ironies of Umamusume is that since all trainees are real trainees that existed in the real racing world, the majority of them are good at Medium races because Medium races dominate the G1 in Japan. This means that there is a huge amount of possible trainees you can use, but there are still going to be a few good/best choices. That said, it isn’t useful to just say “use anyone!” so here is a good list of a few solid trainees that you could consider working with for Scorpio Cup based on what roster you have available:

Starters Only: Daiwa Scarlet (Front), Gold Ship (End)

Some Pulls: Agnes Tachyon, Super Creek, Mayano Top Gun, Nice Nature (Debuffer), Mejiro Ryan

3 Stars: Silence Suzuka (Runaway Blocker), Seiun Sky, Summer OR Regular Maruzensky, Taiki Shuttle (Pace), Meisho Doto, Oguri Cap, Mejiro McQueen, Manhattan Cafe, Narita Taishin, Autumn Gold City

Again, you could consider Christmas Oguri, but she isn’t out yet, and you may not want to bank your entire race on that release. There are a LOT of trainees you can use here, and frankly there’s almost no bad options in any category; any sizeable trainee stable will work great here, and you can run aces in almost any position, meaning that you really do have the ability to train widely.

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.

Groundwork

The skill that keeps on trucking.

As for Skills, Seiun Sky’s Angling x Scheming, Taiki Shuttles Shooting for Victory and Oguri Cap’s Triumphant Pulse are great, and skills like Let’s Pump Some Iron remain solid picks for back field runners. Front Runners are competitive in this race, so Angling x Scheming on front runners like Summer Maruzensky paired with Groundwork and relevant Green Skills will work great, however, you need to be aware that Silence Suzuka Runaways can ruin your strategy here since she’ll prevent your Front Runner from being able to activate Angling x Scheming; having skills for Duty of Dignity Calls or similar “fighting” skills can sometimes help as a back-up.

Approaching the End of the (Real) Year

We’re coming in on the end of 2025, and as the holidays settle in, the new year of Umamusume seems like it will certainly be interesting to see if Cygames has any other unplanned updates or changes to the game ahead of the “First Year” anniversary that should hit sometime in early Spring for us along with Make a New Track. 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