The Best Support Cards for the Sagittarius Cup in Umamusume: Pretty Derby

2026 is under way and boy let’s just move past pretending that the year is not already deeply on fire and instead talk about Umamusume: Pretty Derby! The upcoming Sagittarius Cup presents a fun and challenging race in the Arima Kinen, and last week, we discussed how to approach the race and understand how it works. We also talked briefly about the actual Arima Kinen itself, so if you’d like a bit of horse racing history, take a look at our guide from last week! This week, wel’ll spend a little more time breaking down Support Cards that you may want to look to put into your deck, as well as replacement cards or substitutes to try and help out players of any level.

If you’re fairly new to Umamusume: Pretty Derby or our coverage of the game, we have a variety of guides that cover everything from Career Mode to Support Decks and Inheritances, as well as PVP and other useful tips to get you up to speed with how to play the best management sim out there. Now, let’s get down to brass tacks on how to assemble the best possible deck you can for the Sagittarius Cup!

The Sagittarius: The Short Long

The Sagittarius Cup is a Long distance race (2500m) on Nakayama Racecourse run from the Right Inner Posts in Winter with Sunny Weather and Firm 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. Players who have faced the Arima Kinen in numerous careers are certainly familiar with the race itself, but planning to play it at the highest competition against other players is a slightly different beast, meaning that the right green skills can make all the difference when it comes to the Sagittarius and obtaining victory.

Regular readers are familiar with Firm Conditions, one of the most common green skills in Champions Meetings, and that means that it is also pretty easy to obtain from a variety of sources. Notably, Rice Shower Power and Super Creek Stamina provide it, both of which also come with the ability to learn Swinging Maestro, meaning that one of the two should be in your deck anyway; another sleeper hit in the variety of cards you can pick is Seeking the Pearl Guts, because Seeking the Pearl is a card that can provide you with Uma Stan, even if if it isn’t the most reliable source of that skill. Barring any of those three, you can also obtain Firm Conditions from Nishino Flower Speed and Power, King Halo Speed and Power, Satono Diamond Stamina, Winning Ticket Stamina, Power, and Guts, and Meisho Doto Guts.

Nakayama Racecourse is the Green Skill for this particular track, and there are a few quirks when it comes to obtaining this particular skill. It is only available on a few cards, none of which are particularly amazing choices in general decks: Grass Wonder Guts, Yukino Bijin Guts (SR and SSR) and Wit, Mejiro Palmer Guts, Nakayama Festa Stamina, and Oguri Cap Power. Of these, Yukino Bijin’s SSR Guts card from the previous event is a solid card if you can fit it into your deck. However, although it doesn’t relate to cards, Special Week and Oguri Cap can both obtain this skill from their own careers; if you’re training Oguri Cap in particular for this event, you can likely just pick it up from her own career, or look to obtain it from inheritance sparks if you feel like adding any of these cards are a detriment to the server.

Non-Standard Distance is one of the more problematic Greens, because there are not a lot of support cards that provide it: Mayano Top Gun Speed and Stamina, Meisho Doto Guts, Manhattan Cafe Stamina (Both SR and SSR) are the only places to obtain the skill. Of these, Mayano Top Gun’s Stamina card is fairly solid if you don’t have other cards to use, otherwise Manhattan Cafe can be the best option. Winter Runner is another is another very limited pool of choices, really only available on the three Yukino Bijin cards and Inari One’s Power Card. You can obtain it from Christmas Oguri and Biwa Hayahide’s careers, but that is also pretty limited of a selection.

The final two Green skills for Sagittarius are Right-Handed and Sunny Days, which do have some generally easy accessibility in both cases. Right-Handed is available on Narita Brian Speed and Stamina, Fine Motion Power and Wit, Matikanefukukitaru Wit, and Zenno Rob Roy Speed. In terms of deck construction Fine Motion and Matikanefukukitaru are great options because they’re Wit cards, and thus help your overall deck stability and career run to begin with. Sunny Days is on Satono Diamond Stamina, El Condor Pasa Power, Hishi Akebono Guts, and Mejiro Dober Wit (SR and SSR). Although Dober is a Wit card like the previous 2 mentioned, she isn’t quite as good as they are, but you could easily slot in Fine Motion/Fuku and Dober and make your deck work great. Remember that while Green skills do help with Groundwork, they are just generally good options for almost any trainee.

The Groundwork Conundrum

Groundwork is considered an absolutely required skill for Sprint and Mile trainees who run in front, like Seiun Sky.

If you competed in the Cancer Cup, you may be familiar with the skill Groundwork, a skill considered required for Front Runners to be competitive in the Champion’s Meetings from this point on in Umamusume’s meta. Groundwork functions by having your racer trigger at least 3 skills early race, and passive Green skills count as activated skills, meaning that most competitive front runners will be looking to obtain 3 Green skills and Groundwork as core parts of their kit. The Cancer Cup provided one of the first testing grounds for working Groundwork into skill builds, but it also presents an interesting and complicated problem for those looking to make Front Runners in Leo Cup (and longer distance races): The need for at least 3 Green Skills, Groundwork, and also the requisite Stamina Recovery skills, along with other desirable mid and late race skills one might want.

The problem is that Groundwork is not a very universal skill and is not easy to obtain from Support Cards; while this has become easier thanks to the November balance update by making it absolutely guaranteed if you have Smart Falcon’s SSR Power card, that still puts a lot of pressure on you getting the skill from a single card and having the event trigger (it usually does, to be fair). There aren’t that many great options to replace this card either, with Oguri Cap Power and Air Groove Guts still being the best possible options. Frankly, you are far better off looking to inherit it from Parents (Like a Seiun Sky, or Maruzensky) than you are relying on your deck, but since Front Runners absolutely need Groundwork in the current meta, you may want to try and work in one of the cards. Shockingly, Air Groove SR is a better choice than Oguri Cap SSR if you have it close to MLB; if not, Oguri Cap is the better choice.

General Deck Suggestion: Riko Kashimoto

Get ready to see a lot of this lady.

Since you’ll be training your racers in Unity Cup (you HAVE been running Unity Cup, right?), a card you’re going to see in almost every deck suggestion I make here is either SSR LB1 Riko or MLB R Riko Kashimoto. This is generally due to the fact that Riko has numerous benefits to running Unity Cup and smoothing out your runs of it, and essentially functions as a proxy Stamina card due to the fact that she provides almost exclusively Stamina and Guts bonuses when you train with her or interact with her. The trick to utilizing Riko effectively though is that you need to get her to at least Green relationship status before (ideally) the first New Year event, so that you can unlock Recreation events with her.

When you are offered a choice of 3 answers for the event “Unexpected Side”, you can actually fail to unlock her recreation events. This is effectively a career killer, and while the gamble on Choice 1 is 12 Stamina and Ramp Up hints, the downside is you don’t get to interact with Riko again, so always choose the second Choice, which guarantees that you unlock Recreation. Although the game now tells you this, I will tell you this also so you can’t say I didn’t warn you!

Once you have Riko’s recreation unlocked, you can utilize her for Recreation events which are great ways to manage your trainees mood (it always provides at least 1 Mood Up), energy restoration, and some Stamina / Guts for your time. This is a great option to resting when your mood dips, and unlike regular Recreation, you can’t really “fail” to benefit from it. Aside from that, Riko provides training effectiveness boosts, energy reduction, and even helps protect against training failure, making her an exceptionally beneficial card if you’re using her in Unity Cup.

That said, if you DO need to replace a card in your deck, always start with Riko. Yes, you’ll probably miss some of the benefits, but if the difference between your deck is running Riko or a card with skills you absolutely need (such as Groundwork), then always choose the skill if it will make or break your trainee; you’ll just have to hope that you roll higher on training events and may need to keep in mind that you’ll be missing out on quite a bit of free Stamina/Guts, and most importantly, mood modifiers.

Swinging Maestro: Not Just for Goo Goo Babies Anymore

One of the biggest changes to deck making meta is that unlike previous runs in which recovery skills meant having Super Creek, the new Rice Shower Power card is actually a better and far more consistent option for the skill than Super Creek. Riko generally fulfills the role of Stamina Card in your deck, and Super Creek really isn’t a “great” card until LB3 other than her providing Swinging Maestro, whereas Rice Shower Power has quite a few good upsides and works well in your deck, but also has a very beneficial secondary aspect: She receives Scenario Link boost for Unity Cup, as she features in the main story of the scenario heavily and that provides some extra incentive to utilize her (Although her Team name skill, Cooldown, is better for Long than Medium).

If you are limited to choose, don’t feel bad: as long as you can get access to Swinging Maestro, just ensure you have the skill, and worry about the rest after that. Both cards are good, and obviously better than nothing, but if you have to make the choice between the two, you are better off getting Rice Shower in your deck over Super Creek, and at the very least, avoid putting both fo them in there; for Scorpio Cup, Rice Shower also provides quite a few debuff skills if you’re trying to build a debuffer, although she mostly targets Pace Chasers.

Keep Your Wits About You

Because of the higher Wit requirement than other races have in the past, including Wit cards in your deck is going to be a much more common consideration but also a new wrinkle in exactly what your deck should, or can, include. Since Riko is something of a “must”, we only have 5 cards to work with total for the overall deck. By this point in playing Umamusume, your deck hopefully contains numerous MLB cards or high LB cards that give more consistent outcomes but also help lessen the blow of thinning your deck out. In this particular instance, it means that you want to include 2 Speed Cards, Riko, Rice Shower Power OR Super Creek (for Swinging Maestro if you don’t have access to other Gold recovery), and 2 Wit cards. The downside of removing more speed from your deck is that your runs will, generally, be smoother, because Wit cards provide improved energy recovery and Wit training boosts Speed as well.

Which wit cards you use will generally be based on what skills you want; as mentioned above, you may want to use Matikanefukukitaru, Mejiro Dober, or Fine Motion, as they impart good Green skills as well as filling out the Wit category. But other Wit cards you can consider are Daiwa Scarlet or Yukino Bijin. The goal of including Wit cards is that when you are training in Career, you avoid using the Rest option as much as possible by instead training Wit, and when training with Wit friends, your energy recovery is increased, making it more efficient than resting in most cases. The November patch did lessen the negative effects of Rest (generally), but it is still better if you can avoid it at all, and 2 Wit cards + Riko will usually provide more upside than resting.

Holiday Miracle: Training Christmas Oguri

If you obtained Christmas Oguri, you might have seen some discussion about how strong she is, and how versatile of a trainee she can be. Her kit takes a little bit of understanding to make sense of, but she is a fantastic choice for Sagittarius Cup (and, spoiler, almost every other one). Oguri’s gimmick is that she needs to recover multiple times (3, at least) to trigger her unique skill, through which she will generally perform exceptionally well once that’s occurred. The trick here is that trying to utilize expensive Gold recovery skills like Swinging Maestro actually won’t work, because they’re so expensive having multiple skills is unlikely. Instead, you’ll want to target 3 Blue recovery skills that can work to trigger her Unique and then keep her in the race. The three suggested skills you’ll want are Triple 7s, Corner Recovery, and After-School Stroll or Standing By. The biggest other factor here is that these skills will not overlap, meaning that you should get maximum recovery benefit from them while also ensuring that Oguri’s ability activates. You should probably skip her own innate Small Breather, though, unless you're running her as a Late Surger.

Corner Recovery is the weaker version of Swinging Maestro, and is actually a fairly available skill to pick up. Inheriting it from various trainees is certainly one option, but it can also be found in Power Mihono Bourbon, King Halo Speed and Power, Kitasan Black Speed, Smart Falcon Power, and Super Creek Stamina, but importantly NOT on Power Rice Shower, at least separately; she will still give you access to it by triggering the event for Swinging Maestro, but you can’t get it separately. After-School Stroll is found on Gold Ship and Sweep Tosho’s cards (All of them), while Triple 7s is Matikanefukukitaru (Or Oguri's own potential level, if you were able to raise it). Standing By is generally only useful if you’re training Oguri as an End Closer, but if you are doing so, you can find it on Gold Ship’s cards, or Narita Taishin’s Wit card (or from Narita Taishin as a parent).

Aside from having the 3 recovery skills, you also have to worry about the usual suite of speed and acceleration skills to get across the finish line, but Oguri’s magic can’t activate without the three recovery skills, so always make sure that you have them available to purchase by the end of the career run you’re currently on. You do have some flexibility with her as you can make her work in almost any position except Front Runner, so select skills appropriately for her to compliment her own unique, and good luck in training your holiday horse! 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, I’ll be training to hopefully see you all out there on the Tokyo Turf!

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Tags: umamusume | Uma Musume Pretty Derby