The brutal wake of the Gemini Cup has slowly washed away with a bit of time, and while that grueling and test of endurance is now behind the Global release of Umamusume: Pretty Derby, there’s no time to rest on your laurels: The Cancer Cup is approaching, and much like the previous Champions Meetings, the time to start preparing is right now. The good news is that this particular race will feel perhaps far less taxing in some ways than Gemini Cup, and also that there are a lot of viable options for trainees that don’t require quite so heavy investment in order to train and participate in the race unlike the more exacting Gemini Cup.
If you’re a newer player for Umamusume: Pretty Derby, Champions Meetings are monthly PVP competitions in which trainers pit their best trainees against other trainers teams in groups of 3. New players would probably be better off checking out our other guides first, such as Understanding Career Mode, Inspiration Sparks, Support Cards, as well as our previous guides on PVP to help understand how Champions’ Meets work. Last week, I provided a guide for the basics of raising Milers, which is a great start for the Mile Race Cancer Cup! This week, we’ll go over the basics of the race, some suggestions for trainees, and some basic Support Deck set-ups for the race in general.
As this is our third Champions Meeting guide, a quick note: These guides are written based off best possible suggestions that combine a discussion of previously established Meta in Japan and also focus on providing as many players as possible the ability to participate; if you are afraid you can’t participate in the Champions Meeting because your account is too new, you’re F2P only, or you have “bad” trainees and cards, that isn’t true, especially for Cancer Cup! So without further ado let’s get down to finding the cure to Cancer.
Open League or Graded League: A Reminder
Before getting into the race itself, one more note: before you participate in a Champions Meeting, you have to select whether you will race in Open League (with a maximum Trainee rating of B) or Graded (Which has no limit, but you can expect Trainees to all be A or higher). A conversation I have had for every Champions Meeting so far is that “Well my trainees aren’t that good, I should just do Open League”. The issue with this, and something that I believe is becoming more understood by players, is that Open League’s grade limit does not actually make it easier to “win”, and in fact makes it more challenging.
The issue primarily comes from the fact that the grade limit attracts trainers who deeply understand the game and are able to Min/Max extremely well in order to hit “B” rank with trainees that will simply leave other B rank trainees in the dust. However, if Open League is the only place you are able to compete because you primarily have on B Rank Trainees, then that is where you should compete; just realize that it will be just as competitive, if not moreso, than the Graded League can be.
Another thing to note is that even when following guides, either ours or other content creators, and even having hundreds of hours in the game and anywhere from 0 to 10,000 dollars invested, much of the actual racing is still random, and much as I did with the Taurus Cup, Gemini Cup had a similar outcome for many people who spent days and weeks and hours preparing: they underperformed. An important distinction to remember is that PVP places your 3 trainees against 6 other trainees, and all 9 racers have internal logic and mechanics to navigate; skill activation is still based on RNG, as 400 Wit means that skills will roughly activate more than 50% of the time, and any number that is not 100% means you cannot rely on those skills activating. Following that, you also cannot rely on skills activating at the right time; many players I observed complained about the timing of when Swinging Maestro would activate, for example, healing their trainees far too early in the race to make a big impact.
Since Umamusume doesn’t provide players with full control over their trainees once races begin, it’s important to note that there are many outcomes that can occur, and losing is certainly one of them; in fact, it is far more common than you might expect. Whether you choose Open or Graded, the mindset you should have is that you are participating to have fun and see how well you can do, not that you must win or you’ve wasted your time; there’s no real way to guarantee you will win, making this process nothing but endless frustration.
Cancer Cup: A Mile in Her Shoes
Having run the longest race in the game during the Gemini Cup, the focus of the Cancer Cup is Mile distance, particularly 1600m. There’s quite a few differences that will be valuable to internalize in training, but the very first details are, once again, the race itself and where, how, and when it is run: The Cancer Cup is a 1600m (Mile) Distance race run on Tokyo Turf from the Left during Summer in Sunny Weather and Good Conditions. Much like previous Champions Meetings, many of the hints of what type of Trainee you need and things to look for are told upfront, the first being that your racers need to possess A Mile Distance and A Turf Track proficiency. Other aspects of the race provide hints towards possible Green skills you may wish to inherit, such as Standard Distance (which looks for multiples of 400), Summer Runner, Tokyo Racecourse, Sunny Days, and Left-Handed. The new Green skill for Cancer Cup that may also initially confuse trainers is Wet Conditions, which is the opposite of Gemini and Taurus staple skill Firm Conditions: Wet Conditions “improves performance on good, soft, and heavy ground”, so don’t be confused by the words “Sunny” and “Good” in the race description; essentially any race that isn’t listed as Firm is covered by Wet Conditions.
While Green passive skills are good flat stat buffs, there’s another reason to be aware of them for Cancer Cup if you are looking to raise a Front Runner: The Skill Groundwork requires three skills to activate early race, and the easiest and more reliable way to trigger this condition is through Passive Green Skills, because they always activate when the race begins; while they provide no further benefit to your racer than consistent, flat stat buffs, they also always trigger, making them cheap and reliable ways to get a better chance at Groundwork also activating. As I mentioned above, skills in Umamusume are RNG based, meaning that at best you are usually working with “good” odds that skills will activate, but not “guaranteed” ones, so having 3 Green Skills for your Front Runners specifically may mean the difference between winning or losing in that position if you can’t activate Groundwork while everyone else does, or vice versa.
Ahead of the Pack: Front Runners and Pace Chasers
As if to be the complete opposite of the Gemini Cup, the Cancer Cup meta is dominated almost entirely by Front Runners and Pace Chasers; that doesn’t mean there aren’t strong contenders in Late Surger or End Closer positions, but unlike the previous two Champions Meets, you won’t be seeing armies of Gold Ships this time around. A lot of the meta units in this race will be fighting for control of the front of the race based on the historical records from the Japanese meta, which is why the abovementioned Groundwork is such an integral skill if you are planning on running a Front Runner in the race.
The meta is fairly rigid when it comes to Cancer Cup, a fact that it shares with Gemini, and something that most Challenge Meets will factor in for a considerable while until newer options and content changes allow the game to evolve; for Cancer Cup, however, you can and will primarily expect to run into Front Runners who are going to be running very similar kits: Groundwork, supported by at least 3 passive skills, and Seiun Sky’s unique skill Angling and Scheming, and then as many Straightaway acceleration and velocity skills as you can afford. Consistent trainers who have been around for the previous two Champions Meetings may notice that there’s a distinct lack of a specific type of skill mentioned so far: Recovery. Unlike Taurus and Gemini, Cancer cup is all about speed, meaning that you’ll want to avoid recovery skills like the usually ubiquitous Swinging Maestro in favor of more skills that will help your trainee get to the front faster and stay there throughout the race.
Mile races in Umamusume are predominately Speed focused, although Power plays a very important role in ensuring acceleration; Power determines how fast your racer reaches top speed, so in order to prevent being overtaken in the last corner or on the final spurt, trainees will want high power and acceleration skills. If you’re not raising a Front Runner, you are welcome to skip Groundwork, as your racer isn’t looking to take the lead immediately and stay there, but you may still want to consider the passive skills for the flat stat bonuses they provide. Pace Chasers are going to instead want to consider inheriting / using (depending on who you are training) the unique skills of strong Pacers like Narita Brian’s Shadow Break, Oguri Cap’s Triumphant Pulse, Daiwa Scarlet’s Resplendent Red Ace, Mejiro McQueen’s The Duty of Dignity Calls, and El Condor Pasa’s Victoria por Plancha are all excellent choices.
Watching from the Rear: Late Surgers and End Closers
Although the Cancer Cup meta generally favors and expects Front Runners and Pace Chasers, there are still many cases of runners from the other two strategies still doing quite well and snatching victory from unsuspecting opponents competing for the lead throughout most of the race. Much like the Gemini cup, the winner of Cancer Cup is decided on the final straightaway rather than corner, meaning that trainees like Gold Ship and Narita Taishin can still perform very well, although Gold Ship has a harder time taking advantage of this race compared to others due to the short length of the race.
Narita Taishin’s Potential 5 Skill, Encroaching Shadow, remains the best straightaway skill in the game, so if you raised and trained her for the Gemini Cup, she’s going to be a viable option once again to pursue for Cancer Cup as the strategy is the same: ensure that she has good speed and acceleration skills and then, late race, have Encroaching Shadow trigger which will rocket her to the front of the race.
Late Surgers will perhaps have a harder time in this race and End Closers, if only because End Closers are able to use Encroaching Shadow / Straightaway Spurt, which isn’t available to Late Surgers, giving them a slight deficit when it comes to available skills and tools to win the race. Late Surgers do already benefit by not being as far back as End Closers anyway, but either position may want to take advantage of inheriting Mejiro Ryan’s Let’s Pump Some Iron, a great skill for racers coming from the back on the final corner.
Support Deck Suggestions
If you’ve been playing for a little while and become used to the training routine suggested for Gemini and Taurus prep, then some of the same tips apply when it comes to Support Deck suggestions here, although Mile races require focusing on Speed and Power over Stamina and Speed, a combination that can be slightly more friendly to training if only because Speed Training includes a small amount of Power increase when you take it. It still means that your deck is going to be split between two different stats, however, with the focus of your deck generally being based on what your trainee needs the most. Some effective decks for this are going to follow the traditional 4/2 or 3/3 format, either 4 Speed 2 Power or 3 Speed / 3 Power; if your trainee has very high growth in specific stats, you can also opt to sub in at least 1 Wit card.
One of the bigger tweaks here is that Mile races tend to require slightly more spread out stats than it might first seem, and that because of this, some variety in Support Decks and Inheritances might be needed to make sure you’re approaching the goals you want. Miles will want 1200 Speed, 600~ Stamina, (as close to) 1200 Power, 300~ Guts, and 400 (at least, but closer to 600) Wit for the “perfect” trainee. This is a pretty grueling statline to try and navigate, even with the fact that Speed will Raise Power, and Power will raise Stamina. Of course, as many trainers found out in the Gemini cup, approaching “perfect” means something different than actually achieving it, and there are many, many things that can impact how close you can get to that.
For trainees that gain 20% in a desirable stat, you can likely get away with running less Support Cards in that stat (for example, 20% Speed Growth means you can probably reduce your Speed cards to the best available ones you have and the best skills they offer). This can also be a boon to allowing your deck to be more flexible, since a 20% Power Growth trainee may be able to use less Power cards, thus opening a slot for a Wit or Friend card (like Tazuna).
Some of the best cards to keep an eye on or look for in your collection are going to be those that offer skills that benefit the Cancer Cup, specifically cards that teach Groundwork. Currently in Global there are 4 options available: SSR Power or SSR Speed Gold Ship (as well as R Gold Ship, but by doing the Umaquest event, you can earn the SSR Speed Gold Ship for free), R Symboli Rudolf Wit, SR Air Groove Guts (And R Air Groove Guts), and SSR Oguri Cap Power (and, again, R Oguri Cap Power). Because Groundwork is so important in raising a Front Runner, your only option aside from these cards is to find a Parent that has Groundwork as a spark that you will hopefully inherit the hint for.
If you aren’t training a Front Runner and don’t need to worry about Ground Work, you may have a slightly easier time in building a deck that doesn’t have to cater to ensuring the skill is available to you. Of the cards listed, Oguri Cap and Air Groove are likely more directly beneficial or valuable to training than Gold Ship’s cards are, so they can still find value even if you don’t need them just for Groundwork. Other very solid choices aside from SSRs (such as Kitasan Black, Biko Pegasus, Special Week, or Smart Falcon) are SR cards like SR Shiko Windy Speed, SR Daitaku Helios, SR Daiwa Scarlet, SR Hishi Amazon Power and SR Mejiro Ryan Power.
Selecting Your Trainees
Some very good news for Cancer Cup is that the amount of viable trainees is actually quite wide, since the most desirable skill for Front Runners is inheritable from Seiun Sky parents (meaning you don’t need to actually own or train her), and that there are many, many trainees who can run Miles very well. Even some of the better options need a single Mile inherit to go from B to A. Another new player or lower investment player friendly aspect of the Cancer Cup is that aside from Narita Taishin, few if any trainees require their Potential Level skills, meaning that a Seiun Sky at Potential Level 1 or Level 5 will perform roughly the same because the potential level skills aren’t integral to her success. With that said, here are suggestions for trainees depending on your level of investment in the game and available trainees:
Starters Only: Sakura Bakushin O, Daiwa Scarlet, Vodka, Gold Ship
Some Pulls (Generally need to be promoted to 3 Stars): El Condor Pasa, Grass Wonder, King Halo, Air Groove
Some 3 Stars: Seiun Sky, Smart Falcon, Maruzensky, Oguri Cap, Silence Suzuka, Mihono Bourbon, Taiki Shuttle
Upcoming/Recent 3 Star Choices: Summer Maruzensky (although her release may not happen before the race)
Much like the previous race, while some new trainees will be released before the Cancer Cup, none of them are particularly earth shattering or “required”, with the possible exception being Summer Maruzensky. However, her release date and the timing of the Cancer Cup isn’t quite set in stone yet, meaning that while she could be a factor, it may be a very late and last minute trainee situation like Seiun Sky was to the Gemini Cup, meaning that waiting for her is probably not advisable.
Parents, Sparks, and Skills for Success
In our guide for general Mile trainees, we discussed that inheritance sparks for Miles often falls into which stat your racer needs the most help with, either Speed or Power. However, due to the exacting nature of the Cancer Cup, Stamina Inherits may actually be required to meet the 600~ threshold and reducing the amount of Stamina training that will actually be required. Even still, there’s a good chance that some Stamina training will be required to meet your goals, which should be done in Summer when all trainings are level 5; unless there is some Rainbow training that will give 50+ in a stat, taking the Stamina or even Guts trainings are a good way to ensure you hit the goals for those stats.
You can also opt to inherit Speed or Power on the Stat your trainee doesn’t get a large natural bonus in, which can reduce the overall amount of training that you’ll need to do in those stats and can spend more time on other stats. Another important step is considering when and how to raise your Wit; a fairly common veteran strat is to take Wit training on days in which nothing else viable is really happening, especially if numerous supports are on Wit. Wit training restores a small amount of Energy and can still trigger training Events, meaning that it improves a stat, preserves and restores Energy, and also allows you to unlock hints or other event bonuses. Compared to Resting, Wit training is often a vastly more cost effective “day off”, especially considering that Resting is random and can even have a negative effect if you are unlucky and your trainee gets the Night Owl status.
300 Guts and 400 Wit should be fairly doable without doing much else than clearing the URA Finale and training in general, so the real formula comes down to achieving 1200 Speed, 600 Stamina, and (as close to) 1200~ Power. This will take practice runs and careful consideration of when trainings are valuable and when they aren’t, as well as understanding your Support Deck, Inheritances, and the general flow of your trainee’s events. The only other consideration for training is that you’ll need to discern what skills you are tracking down and what you need to do in order to unlock those hints.
Aside from the innate skills of your trainees, you’ll want to prioritize skills based on what position you are training for: Front Runners need to have Groundwork, 3 Passives (at least), Angling and Scheming, and other velocity/acceleration skills like Standard Distance, Mile Corners and Mile Straightaways, or even Escape Artist/Fast-Paced in order to maintain a lead. If you’re looking to train a Pace Chaser, while you don’t need the flat passive skills (as you aren’t running Groundwork), you may still want them just for the benefits to stats, especially if you’re a little short of stat goals in your training. Pace Chasers may also want to consider skills like Focus (which reduce Late Start penalties) or Tail Held High, which is like Late Race Groundwork (and can thus help your Pace Chaser overtake others ahead of them). If you happen to be training someone like Narita Taishin in the back of the pack, the skill No Stopping Me / Nimble Navigator may actually pay off: while positioning skills don’t always seem to be valuable, there’s a good chance your Taishin will be behind 8 other racers, meaning that a positioning skill like Nimble Navigator can help ensure their spurt doesn’t run them directly into the backs of other trainees and stall their progress.
Do I Really Not Need Recovery?
While running no recovery skills may seem scary, the biggest issue is that Skill Points are a tight economy, and even with extremely good luck in getting Skill Hints and discounts, the skills you want and are going to prioritize taking will likely eat up most of your budget. Even on a very good run, Swinging Maestro still costs around 300~ Skill Points, which is a huge investment. But even if Skill Points weren’t the problem, most meta data from the Japanese running of the Cancer Cup shows that trainees like Agnes Tachyon and Super Creek, who both have innate recoveries, performed fairly badly in the race.
So while the thought of picking recovery skills is tempting, the reality is that you are better off ensuring you have at least 600 Stamina and 300 Guts. Of course, you can also play around with those numbers a little bit; if for some reason you end up with 550 Stamina but 400 Guts, you’re still likely in the same realm, as Guts becomes a ‘secondary’ form of Stamina when the initial one runs out, and can supplement it if needed. Although it isn’t exactly an ideal goal or thing to pursue, if you’re using a guts card like SR Air Groove, there is a chance your Guts stat will become a bit higher than normal, meaning you can worry slightly less about Stamina.
Also, while Debuffers are bound to exist in this race as well, that fear isn’t exactly worth piling points into Recovery at the possible cost of more important skills. Although, as an opinion over solid researched advice, Western Champions Meetings have seen a vastly huge amount of Debuffers, to the detriment of most players actual performance; the Gemini Cup had numerous “Nasty Nature” debuffers in a race that didn’t require or really benefit from them, and so you could possibly expect to see them here, but their debuffs are likely to be more about slowing racers through the Hesitant line than they are to remove Stamina. Also, the Debuff strat for Cancer Cup is less about specific skills, and more about running Sakura Bakushin O or Smart Falcon as “Blockers”, a strat we’ll talk about in more detail next week.
You’ve got about 3 to 4 weeks to prepare for the Cancer Cup, so I hope you’ll give it a go and see what you can do in it! 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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