The Virgo Cup is about to begin, but there’s still time to try and carve out your best possible team before things really get underway. The first few days are devoted to selecting which League you want to compete it, and from there, Round 1 and 2 have a few days between them, so you can absolutely still train up some super trainees to run the Virgo Cup for you and put together a team that you can get you across the finish line. This is especially important to remember after the changes to Global that occurred on Nov. 11th, with Support Cards, Trainees, and other rebalances absolutely shaking up the game and meta right before a big Champions Meeting.
If you missed our first guide covering the basics of the Virgo Cup, I highly suggest you check that out before you keep reading, as we will only graze some of the surface details of the race in this week’s guide. Instead, this week we’ll be focusing on what Trainees are the best choices and who you can make the most wave with depending on what type of account you have, and thankfully this is a far easier task than before due to the rebalancing! If you’re curious about the changes that occurred, we have two articles covering the general changes with Cygames’ press release, and a secondary guide covering the more granular changes to hints, crystals, and more that dropped last week. We also have a slew of guides that you can use to get started with Umamusume: Pretty Derby if you’re new to the game, and if you’ve been curious to try it out, there’s never been a better time to hop in than now!
Reminder: Open League and Graded League
Those of you who have participated in other Champions Meetings may remember some of this lecture, but for new competitors, there are two Leagues that you can select during the first few days of a Champions Meeting: Open, and Graded. The biggest difference is what letter rank trainees can compete in which cup, with Open being limited to B rank, and Graded being completely open. Although it may seem oxymoronic that Open has more restrictions, the general idea is to help divide lower rank Uma’s from higher ranked ones. In practice, though, this actually tends to make Open League far harder and more cutthroat than Graded, because players who know how to min-max dominate Open League.
The biggest change between this Champions Meeting and the previous ones, though, is that Graded is now likely to start seeing an increase in A+ and even S rank trainees due to the release of Unity Cup. Because Unity Cup increases stat lines (in that it is easier to achieve higher overall stats, the max is still 1200 for now), a trainee who seemed very strong or dominant in previous Champions Meetings (such as the previous Mile meet, Cancer) may now find the competition far more steep and even outclassed. If you’re planning on running in the Graded League and have not trained new trainees in Unity Cup, you may find that your general performance is going to be far more uneven than previous, even successful, runs.
If you haven’t started training in Unity Cup, you should absolutely try to do a few runs into the Scenario before the Virgo Cup starts completely, and focus likely on the Ace you want to run in order to improve their overall stats and skills. Unity Cup has a small learning curve to it, so if your first few attempts don’t feel like they’ve produced anything new, you may need to ensure that you’re making maximum benefit from your Support Deck and your Teammates boost to your stats, and a good rule of thumb is to ensure that your deck includes Riko, either MLB R Riko or SSR LB1 Riko in order to get the best possible outcomes. Although there are a lot of granular bits about why Riko is an important card, to keep things simple, she can act effectively as a Stamina card in your deck and help you round out your Stamina goal for the Virgo Cup.
The Virgo Cup Basics: A Mile a Minute
As a reminder, the Virgo Cup is a Mile Distance race run on Hanshin Turf at 1600m from the Right on Outer Posts during Fall in Sunny Weather on Firm Conditions. For those of you who are perhaps new to PVP training in Umamusume, Champions Meeting races provide all of the information you need about the race in their title cards, and these details are important to fishing for Green Skills that will give your racers specific flat stat parameter buffs that can help them pull out the win, as well as help prioritize what types of skills you may want to try and hunt down aside from standard race staples like acceleration and speed skills.
Since the Nov. 11th balance change, it is also worth searching for Mile skills, such as Mile Corners or Mile Straightaways, which were “fine”, but now considerably better skills to pick up for your competitor to have a stronger overall kit. For the sake of simplicity, you’ll still want to focus on improving your Trainee’s kit with skills like Professor of Curvature, Straightaway Adept, and Unique Skills that benefit the Style your trainee is best suited for. Front Runners will want Angling x Scheming or Red Shift, for example, while Late Surgers will want Triumphant Pulse or Let’s Pump Some Iron. It is also worth remembering that many trainees have numerous changes to their kits, meaning that unique skills that may not have been as useful before are now far more useful and allow more trainees than ever to be competitive in Champions Meeting.
The general statline that you’ll want to shoot for on your Ace (and ideally all of your trainees if you want them to be competitive) is 1200 Speed, 700 Stamina, 900+ Power (Ideally above 1000), 400~500 Guts, and 400+ Wit (higher is always better). Miles don’t have the exacting Stamina requirement of longer races, but the Stamina needs are a constant thing to consider due to the popularity of debuffers in Global meta, and the fact that Stamina and Guts now are going to play a large role in your overall performance even more than before. While Guts had been slowly gaining importance due to being a secondary Stamina, the Nov. 11th update brought about a change that makes Guts modify your Speed, specifically your speed during the final Spurt of the race, and having less than 400 (and also missing your Stamina goal) means your trainee is very likely going to run out of steam or not be able to reach max speed and lose.
Blocking the Runway: Silence Suzuka
Last week, you might recall I mentioned that Silence Suzuka can now gain access to the Runaway skill, which is a new style of running that goes on top of Front Runner. It is a tricky style, and frankly very difficult to train one effectively to actually win the race in our current climate; Runaways need 3.5x Stamina compared to other positions, meaning that Suzuka essentially needs Max Speed, Max Stamina, Nearly Max Power, Guts, and High Wit, which is not impossible, but is also not extremely accessible without exceptional access to high level MLB Support Cards.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make use of Suzuka’s Runaway, though, especially if you are looking to throw some water on the Front Runner meta; Runaways take the first spot in the race, and even though she may run out of steam and fail in the later part of the race, being in first up until the final corner essentially deactivates Summer Maruzensky and Seiun Sky ability to take over the race from the front. Angling and Scheming relies on being in first place on the final corner, so if you want to run the “seasonal” Debuffer for this Champions Meeting, consider training a Runaway Silence Suzuka for the job.
You’ll still need to train her like a competitive Front Runner, meaning she’s going to want Groundwork, 3 Greens, possibly Early Lead, and more, and higher than average Stamina (like 800 or 900) and a Gold Recovery skill at least, if not two. And while that seems like a lot of work to just not win the Race, well… she may just actually win it, depending on your lobby and if she survives, and second, if you build competitive Pace Chasers or later position racers, they won’t be bothered at all by the blocking!
Nov. 11th Means Meta Is Whatever You Want, Sort Of
Below I’ll be giving you some of the “Best” suggestions for trainees, but the Nov 11th balance patch made this list far, far broader and wider than it was before. There are certainly going to be trainees you will see a lot of and who will very likely be the “Best in slot” for the race in certain positions, but that means far less than it did beforehand (A moment of silence for all of the players who rushed to pull Summer Maruzensky after being told she would be the dominant trainee for 6 months).
The bigger thing that will matter from here on out is what parents you have access to, and remembering that your trainees can only borrow parents 3 times a day, so you will want to start really focusing on training up your own ideal parents with Unique and other skills (such as Groundwork) that you want to try to pass to your aces. Until we have access to larger borrowing limits, the 3 a day limitation is quite restrictive on how much effective training you can do in a day, so trying to raise parents should be a secondary priority and perhaps a priority beyond the Virgo Cup to consider spending your time on in the game.
This is where the URA Finale can still be useful: URA Finale is “faster” than Unity Cup, and since Parents don’t really care about their final stats, you’re simply looking to farm for Sparks over trying to get the most effective run possible. However, there is some merit to trying to get parents who have URA Finale Sparks and Unity Cup Sparks, but that can be perhaps a goal beyond lining up your first 9 Star Stamina parent or similar target!
Support Deck Suggestions
If you’re looking to do a few Unity Cup runs before the actual Virgo Cup race begins later this week, there’s still time and an effective run with a good deck can certainly produce surprising results. Unless you’re trying to train a Runaway Silence Suzuka in which you need more Stamina (and, specifically, recovery skills), you can likely find a good amount of success with a Support Deck that has 3 Speed, Riko, and 2 Wit cards. If your trainee lacks growth in a desired area (such as power) you can supplant one of the Speed Cards with a Power Card, but generally the support card meta is going to still heavily favor stacking Speed as your primary deck piece.
As mentioned earlier in the article, Riko plays a very important role in Unity Cup runs, and so her presence in your Ace’s deck is very likely sealed unless your deck has access to every single high level MLB SSR (in which case you probably don’t need my guides, but I’m flattered!), Riko is exceptionally helpful due to the stats (specifically Stamina) that she provides. Her outing events also provide great Mood and Energy control, flat stat boosts, and her end of Career bonus is also a nice overall boost to your stats; it becomes incredibly hard to argue against including Riko for other cards in your deck, and if you’re really looking to favor Speed over other stats, Riko essentially serves as a Stamina card with extra benefits (but no inherit skill hints).
The trick to Friend cards is that you need to ensure that Riko is level 3 (green) Friendship before the 2nd year New Year’s Event to get the most benefit from her card. This can mean that early trainings may seem unfavorable in order to ensure that Riko’s friendship increases, but the benefit outweigh the cost (usually). Worst case, it helps you learn the Unity Cup schedule, but ideally you can ensure that Riko’s friendship is Green early and also not interfere with your training much.
One more tip about Support Decks and the Unity Cup: you ALSO need to ensure that your trainee is meeting fan goals for their uniques! The Unity Cup team races do NOT provide fans, meaning that if you aren’t taking extra races into account, you may miss your goals depending on who you are training (Silence Suzuka is a great example). Also, when it comes to training with Friends and Teammates, a unique quirk of the Unity Cup is that your supports will gain a small gauge next to their icons that builds up over time, like a small burning flame. You can save these for opportune moments, rather than feel you need to use them the moment they are available; unlike rainbow trainings, they don’t go away if you train something else, meaning you can really save up for an explosive rainbow training if you are able to time things right and have the patience to do so. This is also why running Wit cards is very common, as Unity Cup demands more Energy management than URA Finale does in order to maximize gains. And don’t forget: Choosing “Team Name: Carrot” Gets you access to the skill “It’s On!” which is by far the best skill available out of the team name selections, and you will likely want it on your PVP Umas.
Selecting Your Trainees
While there are so many options now after the rebalance, there are still some that are better than others, and I’ve divided them here into a small list based on the type of player you might be. These lists don’t matter much for positions, just who you may have available based on how often or how much you’ve pulled on trainee banners.
Here are some general suggestions for trainees you can use in the Virgo Cup:
Starters Only: Vodka, Daiwa Scarlet (Pace), Sakura Bakushin O (Front), Gold Ship
Some Pulls: Mayano Top Gun, Mejiro Ryan, Grass Wonder
3 Stars: Silence Suzuka, Seiun Sky, Taiki Shuttle, Summer Maruzensky, Fuji Kiseki, Gold City, Meisho Doto, Rice Shower (Honestly, almost any 3 Star who can run a Mile is great).
You will want to ensure that Taiki Shuttle is Potential 5, as well as Gold Ship, if you are choosing to use either of them; also, Narita Taishin can be mashed into this race with some inheritances, but also requires Potential 5 to be really effective, meaning that you’re likely going to have one or maybe 2 of these options at Potential 5, but very unlikely that you have more than that due to the resource costs!
Positional Advantages
Depending on who you choose from the above list, the biggest considerations are going to fall on what style you wish to play as for your team, and who you want your Ace to be (or where you want them to be, specifically). Almost all positions are viable in Virgo Cup, and the Nov. 11th patch really made that more viable than ever before, shortening the domination of Front Runners by quite a lot (although they are still very strong and likely to be top contenders).
If you’re running a Front Runner, you’ll need to ensure they have Groundwork, perhaps the most restrictive skill set of any position. Groundwork alone can be difficult to ensure you obtain due to how few options you have to obtain it (and only one guaranteed one in Smart Falcon’s SSR card events), but then also at least 3 early race skills (such as Greens) and possible skills like Early Lead to even further boost your chances of taking the lead. With the chance of Runaway Silence Suzuka’s in the mix, Front Runners will also need to have strong skills that allow them to combat Angling and Scheming not being 100% reliable, so good skills like Red Shift from Maruzensky can help fill that gap.
Pace Chasers haven’t changed much, although it is important to remember they always want just a little bit more Stamina than any other position (except Runaway), but skills like Triumphant Pulse and Let’s Pump Some Iron can do a lot of work here, as well as Nimble Navigator and other positional skills. Although they used to be considered less effective, skills like Nimble Navigator can be amazing now thanks to the balance patch making them more reliable, and this is where Taiki Shuttle can really shine if you have been looking for a chance to use her competitively, as well as Rice Shower! Both can make excellent Pace Chasers, but as a note, Taiki Shuttle really wants to be Potential 5 to have Mile Maven.
Late Surgers have always been competitive in most of the PVP meetings, and this one is no different. Staple Gold Ship remains effective, but Oguri Cap is even better now than she used to be thanks to Triumphant Pulse being rebalanced, so if you found her performance in the past underwhelming, don’t worry, she’ll perform far better now! Also worth noting that Vodka, a free starter unit, is one of the best trainees for the Virgo, Mile, and Late Surger position, so I highly suggest checking her out. End Closers can also do very well, but this domain is mostly that of Narita Taishin and Hishi Amazon, and Taishin still remains perhaps the best to compete in this spot, made even better with the rebalancing patch; just make sure she has access to Encroaching Shadow!
Virgo Cup and the Future
Virgo Cup will truly test how the Global Meta shifts from historical precedents, although the next cup may be the actual one in which we see real differences. That being said, this event has a lot of options and can possibly be a real game changer to both compete in and watch to see what happens, so this is a great time to get involved if you’ve been on the fence for PVP in the past. 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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