Last week, we talked about the upcoming September Challenge Meet, the Gemini Cup, a brutal endurance race that tasks Umamusume: Pretty Derby players to assemble a team of three trainees to try and go for glory in one of the longest possible races in the game. Our guide focused on providing a general rundown of the race, what to expect of it, overall strategies and an introduction to the trainees and support decks players might wish to pursue, as well as how to start planning for the event which is scheduled for mid-September. After how surprised many players were by how challenging the Taurus Cup was and the difficulty of Long Distance races, preparations for the Gemini Cup in the long-run will hopefully benefit players who want to attempt training for and winning the race.
This week, we’re going to take a look at trainees for the race, and go over their pros and cons, as well as options for players of all stripes: whether you’re a new player or only playing with very few trainees, someone who has pulled a few three star trainees, or a player with a wide roster, there are numerous options and ways to approach the Gemini Cup. If you’re a newer player, you may want to first check out our Guides for Umamusume, including Careers, Support Decks, Inheritances, Potential Levels, PVP in general, and especially our previous Gemini Cup Guide.
Important Basics to Remember for All Trainees
The first and most important thing to remember is that while Trainee stats are static, individual training runs through Career are not; the game employs random chance and probability for numerous things, and you’ll need to remember that it may take you a few tries to get an outcome you’re happy with or feel is “ready” for the competition. There is nothing wrong with doing numerous runs, as long as you also remember that burning out is a big danger in a management simulation, which means you may take bad risks the more stressed or tired you become. It’s also important to remember that if you are relying on borrowed guest Veterans, you only get 3 chances a day to use them, so you’ll either need to consider training Veterans of your own to use as parents, or work on training some Parents first in order to make multiple runs a day feasible.
Another thing to keep in mind with running Careers is that there is a high chance that you first runs at a career with a new trainee may run into numerous road bumps. It can be worth it doing a trial run or two (or even three or four) to get used to the flow of the trainee’s schedule and the training schedule looks like. Mayano Top Gun, for example, gets 25 days of training after her Maiden Race, but following that has very small windows of training broken up by numerous races, meaning that early mistakes can make recovering from them very difficult. It’s also important to get familiar with the types of events you can expect from your Support Decks; aside from memorizing what events give you specific skill hints, it can become faster to complete careers once you know which dialogue options give you stats you want, or restore energy or even raise your mood.
The biggest waste of time you can ever do in a Career is Rest, because it means you are spending a day not training, and restoring energy through Resting should be a last resort option for days in which training is just not worth the risk; nothing feels worse than missing a huge rainbow training because you have to rest instead. The second worst thing you can do is Recreation, because raising mood doesn’t always come with the benefit of restoring energy too. By ensuring that you know when your deck has a chance of giving you Mood Up or Energy restoration, you can try to better limit downtime in your training regiments. Otherwise, Trainees all operate the same way: they navigate Careers on their way to challenging the URA Finale, which if cleared, offers around +30 (roughly) to all stats and a bevy of Skill Points. And, frankly, if your trainee can’t clear the URA Finale, they are not going to work in a PVP event.
Finally, trainees are going to want to try and obtain very similar skills, differing only slightly for those that are specifically focused to the Style they like to run (For example, the gold recovery skill Gourmand is useless on anyone who is not a Pace Chaser). This means that there is a good chance your Support Decks will look very similar for most trainees, changing only slightly if the trainee is also one of your Support cards (Such as Super Creek or Mayano Top Gun, for example), or if you have cards that provide better skills to that specific trainee. We’ll cover Support Cards for the Gemini Cup in more detail next week, so keep an eye out for that if you are struggling to figure out what to pick; as a general tip, running 3 Stamina / 3 Speed or 3 Stamina 2 Speed 1 Wit decks are good targets for the Gemini Cup.
Gemini Cup Basics
The Gemini Cup is a Long Distance race at 3200m, which takes place at Kyoto Race Course on Turf, with racers positioned on the Right Hand side using Outer Posts, and is run during Spring in Sunny weather on Firm ground. This means that no matter who you are training or why, you will want to ensure that your racer has at least A grade in Turf, Long, and whatever Style you prefer to run them at. You will also want to consider looking for Green Skills with the following names: Right-Handed, Outer Post Proficiency, Kyoto Racecourse, Standard Distance, Sunny Days, and Firm Conditions. All of these provide flat stat boosts, around 40 per stat, to your Racer’s profile; for example, if you had 500 Power and took Firm Conditions, your racer effectively has 540 Power on a Firm course. These stat bonuses are nice extras to look for and easy ways to spend excess Skill Points on at the end of a training session, as they are often fairly cheap; that said, don’t prioritize these skills over Gold Recoveries or even some speed boosting skills like Homestretch Haste; if you trained properly, these will only be extra bonuses, not filling gaps in your training. Racers want to hit as close to maximum Stamina as possible, meaning over 1050 Stamina, and as much Speed as possible, around 1000. Power and Guts want to be either around 450-500, with Wit being at least 300 to 400; this doesn’t really change regardless of who you are training for this race.
You’ll also want to consider what stats your trainee excels in for bonuses when they train. Every trainee has different percentages, which can make training them easier, or harder, depending on what stat you are trying to raise. For example, Gold Ship gets 20% growth in Stamina, which is why she is not only a great candidate for this race, but also easier to train than others, as Long races need high stamina. This also means that if your trainee gets slower or 0 bonuses in Stamina, you may need to try inheriting more stats from your selected Parents, or alternatively running a modified Support Deck (like 4 STA / 2 SPD) if your trainee needs an extra boost in Stamina. Otherwise, the only and most important aspect of selecting a trainee is that they need to have Long races at A in order to be even mildly competitive in the race. While grades for Styles affect Wit and Turf / Dirt is Speed, Distance aptitudes impact Stamina, meaning that anything below A will take your racer right out of contention no matter how good their stats and skills are, because they will just fade out of the race. Distance Aptitudes can be raised, specifically 1 letter grade per 3 star Spark in that distance that a Parent (or grand-parent) carries, so even someone with poor Aptitude can be raised to A with the right inspirations. You can also potentially reach S rank during Inspiration events, but these are very random, so don’t count on them; just consider them amazing bonuses if they do.
General Trainees: Gold Ship and Daiwa Scarlet
For our first set of trainee suggestions, we’ll start with two that every player has access to: Gold Ship and Daiwa Scarlet. These two trainees are part of the initial 5 all players receive when you start the game, meaning that at the bare minimum you have 2 racers in your account at all times that can be trained to run the Gemini Cup. Of the two of them, Gold Ship is naturally built for the race, while Daiwa Scarlet requires some inheritances to make her work, as she does not naturally run Long races at A grade. Still, that’s not hard to engineer, and even using your own Gold Ship with long sparks as a parent can bump her to A very simply.
A note for both of these Trainees is that this guide is based on the idea that you have–or can–raise both of them to Potential Level 5 and Star Level 3. Potential Levels unlock new innate skills that your Trainee can learn, and for both of these two, these abilities are unique Gold Recovery skills that they will want to have in order to be competitive in the Gemini Cup. If getting them to Potential 5 is not possible but you have no other training options, you’ll need to find Gold Recovery skills to replace them with, which can be hard, but not impossible to do. Star levels govern the quality of their Unique abilities, as well as provide basic stat growth that you’ll need to compete against higher quality trainees further down the list.
Gold Ship is by far one of the easiest trainees to approach for this challenge: She innately builds 20% Stamina and 10% Power, runs Medium and Long races at A, and comes with End Closer A rank as her preferred style. The biggest cons to Gold Ship is mostly located in her Career, which is one of the most chaotic Career runs in the game currently; Gold Ship has numerous random events that can restrict your training options or cause other problems, and she at times can be fairly moody, making it hard to maintain a good mood for maximum training benefits. That’s about all there is for her cons, though, which speaks to the quality and strength Gold Ship brings to an event like Gemini without much preparation. You’ll want to ensure that you level her ability Anchors Aweigh during her Career, and also learning her Potential 5 skill Go Home Specialist, both of which will help her move up during the race to better positioning and also recover her Stamina, which is a great compliment to Swinging Maestro.
Daiwa Scarlet is a little more complicated. Gemini Cup generally favors End Closers and Late Surgers due to their lower Stamina requirements, and there is likely to be a lack of competitive Front Runners and Pace Chasers for the same reason, in that they require the most Stamina. However, Daiwa Scarlet can be very competitive as a Pace Chaser in this race with her Potential 5 Skill Race Planner, complimenting other inherited recovery skills, and since she will almost certainly be at the head of the race, any lacking ability from your opponents may help her steal the win just by virtue of already being very far ahead when the final spurt of the race occurs. Some notes for raising Daiwa is that you will need to inherit Long A, as she starts at B, and you’ll also want to be aware that her stat growth favors Speed and Guts, meaning that you may need to run higher Stamina cards in your deck and inherit slightly more Stamina from your parents, but she can absolutely steal the race and requires mostly just investing in her Potential levels and Star levels to get her ready to race. Like Gold Ship, if you can’t get her to Potential Level 5, you’ll need to find other recovery skills, but Pace Chasers have access to Gourmand, which is a great Gold recovery option you could take if you needed it (or want a 3rd recovery skill on her).
Non-Rare Trainees: A Wide Field
If you’ve done a few pulls on trainee banners during your time with Global, you may also have access to a collection of other trainees that arrived at either 1 or 2 stars; many of these are great choices for the Gemini Cup, as long as you’ve been able to promote them to Star Level 3. Trainers can find that a fairly decent amount of trainees are in this category, including Agnes Tachyon, Super Creek, Grass Wonder, Matikanefukukitaru, Nice Nature, and even El Condor Pasa (with inheritances), and one of the best trainees, Mayano Top Gun. The breadth of trainees here is enough to make you realize that most of the time the difference between a 3 Star trainee and those you raise to 3 Star on your own is pretty minimal, and that for the most part F2P and limited pull players will still often have a lot of tools to work with from the roster.
Of trainees in this category, I’d generally suggest Agnes Tachyon, Super Creek, Matikanefukukitaru, and El Condor Pasa. Grass Wonder and Nice Nature can compete, but their specialty usually relies in debuffing, which isn’t as effective in the Gemini Cup as it was in the Taurus Cup. Of course, this all comes down to preference and how you wish to race, so feel free to pick anyone in this category that you like and want to try training! Only El Condor Pasa actually needs to inherit Length Sparks here to be feasible in the Gemini Cup, and the majority of trainees here can play different positions or styles based on their inherent preferences and easy inheritances.
Agnes Tachyon is a solid choice because of her Unique Skill, U=ma2, which is a better than Gold Recovery Skill that activates on corners in the 2nd half of a race. As the Gemini Cup is a long race, this means you get quite a few opportunities to activate, and combined with other recovery skills like Swinging Maestro can provide Agnes with a very solid battery to get her through the race. The cons here is that Agnes needs to be 3 Star, and doesn’t really benefit from any Potential Levels unless you want to run her as a Pace Chaser, in which case like Daiwa, she gains Race Planner at Potential Level 5. However, she doesn’t really require that skill to work, and her unique and other recoveries will do fine. She also gains 20% on Speed, making it easier to hit Speed targets while focusing on Stamina.
Super Creek is another easy option, as her unique is essentially Better Swinging Maestro. You’ll still need to seek out other Recovery skills for her to learn, but she starts with one of the best in the game already, which greatly helps her suitability much like Agnes. Her stat distribution is a little odd, as she gets 20% in Wit and 10% in Stamina, meaning she won’t really have a lot of innate growth in Speed or Stamina and thus may require a bit more finessing to make her hit the target stats you’re looking for there, but it can be done. Also, if you promote her to Potential Level 5, she gains access to Swinging Maestro also, which means her Unique and Swinging Maestro combine to be the best built in recovery combo in the game. As far as inheritances go, unless you want her to run Pace, you’ll need to have her inherit a Late Surger to go from B to A at least, and very heavily invest in End Closer to make that an A, almost to the point of being unfeasible. Late Surger A works just fine, though.
Matikanefukukitaru is one of my favorite Umas in the franchise; I love the screaming, high-pitched little weirdo. My own affection for her aside, she’s a very viable choice in Gemini Cup: She has 20% Stamina Growth and 10% Power like Gold Ship, fairly even stats across all categories, and naturally runs Mediums/Longs at A with Late Surger at A and Pace Chaser at B. The only real con to Matikanefukukitaru is that her Unique skill is not going to ‘win’ her a race, as it mostly just impacts her positioning. This can still be valuable, but you aren’t getting acceleration, velocity, or a recovery skill out of her, so you’ll have to provide your own. She also gains a unique White recovery skill at Potential Level 2, Lucky 7s, which restores Stamina when there is 777m left to the race. This isn’t as good as a Gold skill, but it is a free, extra, and unique recovery skill, and Potential Level 2 is fairly easy to obtain for most players.
Mayano Top Gun is the final trainee option here, and our first Front Runner candidate. Front Runners can actually compete in the Gemini Cup, they just have extremely high Stamina and skill requirements that can make it very difficult for them to compete. However, Mayano Top Gun has two innate recovery skills, Straightaway Recovery and Deep Breaths, the latter of which is specific to Long distance races. Again, like Matikanefukukitaru, these aren’t as good as Gold Recoveries, but they are viable and easy to obtain, meaning that Mayano Top Gun can have a lot of recovery skills stacked up and available to use, meaning she’s more likely to stay in the race. You can actually run her as an End Closer or Late Surger with Inheritances, as she has the unique stat spread of A A B B, meaning she can cover almost any position easily. If you do want to run her as one of your racers, I suggest getting her to Potential Level 3 for Breath of Fresh Air, the gold upgrade to Deep Breaths.
Deeper Roster, Deeper Choices: 3 Star Trainees
If you’ve managed to pull a few 3 Star Trainees from the various trainee banners, or you’ve cashed in the free ticket for starting the game from a set of 3 Star Trainees, there are a few Long Distance runners that you can work on training. Of the list of “free” 3 Stars you can select, Oguri Cap, Special Week, and Symboli Rudolf are the best choices. While Rice Shower is also available, she wants to be a Pace Chaser, and in a race that is unlikely to have many Front Runners, she’s going to struggle in her spot to race effectively. Other 3 Star trainees that are only available from banner pulls include Narita Brian, Wedding Mayano Top Gun, Anime McQueen, Mejiro McQueen, Biwa Hayahide, and the star of the show, Narita Taishin. T.M. Opera O can run Longs, but like Rice Shower, she doesn’t excel at this particular race.
You may initially wonder why I suggest Oguri Cap, as she isn’t a Long Distance runner naturally, but Oguri Cap is one of the best, if not the best, starting 3 Star Uma in the game for a very long time (and I mean multiple years of content), perhaps only challenged by an upcoming variant of herself. Oguri’s value is reliant on the fact that she can run almost any Track, Distance, or Style, and those she does not have an A in are easy to inherit; for example, you will need to inherit Long to A, but that’s about it. She gains 20% Speed and 10% Power, has a fantastic Unique Skill, and perhaps her biggest con is that her Career is very finicky. Oguri has to run a lot of races to clear her career, and she also tends to be fairly moody, meaning that a “good” Career run with Oguri Cap can suddenly take a nose dive and become unrecoverable. Still, she’s a legendary trainee in the game’s history for a reason; if you want to run her as a Pace Chaser in this event, get her to Potential Level 3, where she unlocks Gourmand as an innate skill; if you can’t, just remember you can get the skill from Special Week’s SSR card.
Symboli Rudolf is another easy to obtain option from the free 3 Star selector, and can easily work in this race as well. She has the coveted 20% Stamina Growth, and a very good Unique Skill that helps her when running in the back of the pack, which can also be a slight con in this particular race; since so many competitors will be End Closers and Late Surgers, Rudolf may have more trouble activating her skill than normal, so you may consider trying to inherit End Closer sparks for her. Otherwise, she’s got a lot of great potential, with some similar caveats to Oguri Cap: Rudolf’s campaign is very swingy in her mood, requiring good familiarity with the events that can occur and how to navigate them.
Mayano Top Gun’s newest alt, Sunlight Bouquet Mayano Top Gun (Otherwise known as Wedding Top Gun) is just as good as her original version for this race, and possibly even better. Unlike regular Mayano, her stat spread is more spread out, with 10% in Speed, Stamina, and Wit, but her new Unique triggers if she is a Front Runner OR and End Closer, meaning that you can select where to run her and still get benefit from her Unique Skill; however, like the original, she needs to inherit A Style in Late Surger or End Closer. If you happened to luck into a copy of her and have the resources, Wedding Top Gun also learns Swinging Maestro at Potential Level 5, meaning you don’t need to rely on having Super Creek in your deck.
A unit that often struggles to get noticed normally, End of the Skies Mejiro McQueen, otherwise known as Anime McQueen, can perform surprisingly well in the Gemini Cup because of the unique activation trigger of her unique skill: she has to run out of Stamina for it to activate. This is very likely in a race like this, and you can opt to try her as a Front Runner (with inherits) or a Pace Chaser, meaning she’ll be in the front and stay there until the end, where her lagging Stamina may cause her to activate her ult as other racers challenge her for position. It’s a slightly risky strategy, and you do still need to build her to have high stamina and recovery skills like everyone else, but it can be a surprising burst of speed at the end of a race. At Potential Level 3, she unlocks Cooldown, which is a good Gold Recovery skill for Long races only.
Narita Brian was recently added to the game around the time of our last article, and she remains a solid pick for Gemini Cup if you happened to obtain her. Her Stat spread is 10% Speed and 20% Stamina, meaning that the two coveted stats are going to grow very well, and her innate preference to run either Pace or Late and Long means there’s not a lot of finessing that needs to be done to make her qualified to run the race; she could even be an End Closer with a decent set of Inherits. She gains access to a unique event triggered skill, Passing Pro, but her other skills from Potential Levels generally favor running her as a Pace Chaser; the problem is that she doesn’t come with an innate recovery skill for that position like Daiwa Scarlet or Agnes Tachyon, so consider that she’ll need to learn them from Support cards or inherit uniques for that to work.
If you’re determined to run a Pace Chaser and have her, Biwa Hayahide can be a great selection at Potential Level 5, because she will unlock 2 different Gold Recovery skills from her potential levels: Cam and Collected and Cooldown. Whether this makes her better in the Pace Chaser position in this event than easier to access units like Agnes and Daiwa is debatable, but if you happen to have Biwa and enjoy training her, and can get her to Potential Level 5, she can absolutely be a great competitor here; for the record, my own Biwa Hayahide was my star Uma for the Taurus Cup, snagging me a first place victory. She’s got a fairly easy career campaign and good skills, with the only real downside being that her stat growths are in Guts and Wit.
Narita Taishin is the final trainee we’ll talk about in this section; in our first article, we mentioned that Narita Taishin is known as the “Star” of the Gemini Cup, because her Potential 5 skill, Encroaching Shadow, makes her one of the scariest competitors in the entire game for a long distance race. She also has an innate healing skill, Sleeping Lion, that is so powerful that many players will likely run a spoiler competitor to turn it off (this is the Haru Urara strat mentioned in our previous article). Of course, with the knowledge that Sleeping Lion will probably be useless, trainers can just avoid it, spending the points on other good recovery skills, while their opponents team is down to 2 actual competitors instead of 3; and, on the off chance you don’t encounter a Haru Urara, your Narita Taishin now has an extra recovery skill that other trainees can’t have.
Angling and Scheming for Your Carats: Seiun Sky
Although she isn’t released at the time of this article, the banner for Seiun Sky will likely be out either by the end of this week, or by the following week. Seiun Sky is considered one of the best trainees and parents in Umamusume, to the point that Japanese players still often rate her very highly for racing Medium and Long distance, and her unique skill, Angling x Scheming, is one of the most sought after inherits even 4.5 years into the game’s release. The reason for this is because of what the skill does: “If you’re in the first position on any corner in the Final Leg or beyond, your acceleration will increase”. Seiun Sky is a Front Runner, perhaps the strongest Front Runner (certainly in Global, anyway), and the simple fact is that she will absolutely be in First Place towards the end of the Gemini Cup if she hasn’t run out of Stamina. A well built Seiun Sky has the ability to run away with the race, and her Potential Level skills all increase her speed at various points of a race, meaning that she will simply get faster and faster the more she stays in first and the skills activate.
The biggest “con” to Seiun Sky here is that she won’t release until the Gemini Cup is likely approaching, leaving trainers with very little time to get her prepared, and if you’ve already invested a lot of Potential Level materials into trainees like Narita Taishin, Gold Ship, or Daiwa Scarlet, having the materials on hand to boost Seiun Sky to Potential Level 5 in time to get her skills may be a tight ask. There is the other, larger con, in that you also need to obtain Seiun Sky, which is a matter of luck (or money, if you go for full pity). If you don’t obtain her, be on the lookout for people who offer has as a parent, as inheriting her skill on someone like Mayano Top Gun or Anime McQueen can provide you with a lot of mileage even if you don’t own the trainee yourself.
From Rags to Riches: Smart Falcon
A final oddball offering for a trainee is Smart Falcon, who is primarily a Dirt racer, and also not a Long Distance racer. This means you need someone who can pass on Turf Sparks to her as well as Long Sparks, which means you may not really want to invest in all of that. However, if you have a Smart Falcon (or friend with Smart Falcon), her Unique Ability, Sparkling STARDOM, is essentially very similar to Seiun Sky’s ability, focusing on where your racer is towards the middle of the race; a racer who possesses both Sparkling STARDOM and Angling x Scheming as a Front Runner that can stay in the race and have their skills activate stands a chance of just absolutely running away with the entire competition, becoming almost essentially uncatchable. It may not be worth trying to make Smart Falcon into one of your racers herself, but if you can get her and have her pass on her Unique Skill, it can give you an edge on your opponents who may not be expecting someone to be that far ahead in the race.
Building Your Team of Three
Hopefully this guide helps in assembling who you want to train, and gives you the basic breakdowns of what they can do and what you need to invest in them for their success. The final step is deciding how you want to compete: do you want to run a team of three racers, or do you want to try running two racers and Haru Urara to counter Narita Taishin, or even more extreme, a single Ace, Haru Urara, and a debuffer (like Grass Wonder or Nice Nature). Unlike Taurus Cup, debuffs are less reliable in a Long competition like this, meaning that while the strategy might be worth experimenting with, it may also leave you with a team of one single competitive racer against six other racers, thus lowering your chances because your other two trainees essentially gave up halfway through the race.
Next week, we’ll take a deeper dive look at Support Cards that can help you build effective Gemini Cup decks, but if you have any questions before then, 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 next time, I hope to see you out there on the track!
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