Quant Edition: Advanced Umamusume Racing Mechanics and Deckbuilding
Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Chapter 3.5: Quant Edition
- Introduction and Assumptions
- Building From the Ground Up
- How Races Actually Work
- Basic Mechanics
- Stamina and You
- Final Spurt
- How to Actually Win Races
- Deckbuilding
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Foreword
"Hello, dear reader. I’m Quant, and I wrote one of the later sections of this guide. I’m a somewhat experienced JP player who consistently places in and have won A group Champions Meeting and consistently places platinum 4 in LOH (if you don’t know what this means don’t worry). In other words, I do well enough to be placing well in the real PvP events that will come to global later (nobody in JP really cares too much about team trials), and I think with that comes enough experience and game knowledge to be of use for you, a presumably newer global player who is experiencing this crazy concept of a franchise for the first time. With that out of the way, before you begin reading the rest of this document I’d hope you give this section some time.
In my experience as we approach the end of the first month of uma global, I think there’s a lot of misplaced expectations from people who have played other gacha games, or even other non-gacha games previously. In a lot of other mobile games, especially gacha games developed by Chinese developers, you can essentially pay your way out of any difficulty check. This is especially compounded in largely singleplayer games, where the real inter-player competition is largely limited to posting the highest damage or the fastest clear times. Be it C6R5 in Genshin, E6S5 in HSR, Pot6 and certain 6* operators in Arknights, 11x mlb in NIKKE, NP5 in FGO, or just about 95% of other gacha games you can come from (hello any EN idolmas players out there, you can skip past this entire section), the theme is largely the same. Pay more, get more power. This is not the case in Umamusume. Even with an unlimited amount of money, and 6 best in slot cards with best in slot parent options, you will still need to grind. A lot. Better gacha rewards in Umamusume do not necessarily lift the power floor in pvp, but instead merely increases the ceiling and allows you to creep ever closer to ‘optimal’. You’re still going to have to work for it.
This does not necessarily mean you have to pay to compete as a f2p or dollphin player, but it does means you will have to put in comparatively more effort and time to match the power level of a leviathan. If your f2p deck can reach 90% of optimal, but the jump from 80-90% takes an extremely large amount of time, then the whale deck can theoretically reach 100% optimal, however their journey from 85% to 100% might also take a significant amount of time. These specific numbers are arbitrary and chosen to illustrate the point, not necessarily as a one-to-one reflection of the actual power gaps involved. At the highest level, Umamusume becomes a game where the objective is optimising how much consistency you’re willing to trade off in favour of higher ceiling potential, and balancing that with how much time is available between PvP events. In JP, upcoming PvP events takes place monthly, with details regarding the event released approximately two months prior, meaning you’ll be spending that month between events preparing for the next one.
So what does this “significant amount of time” entail? Well, at the time of writing I’m currently preparing for an upcoming CM (Champion’s meeting event) with one week prior to opening. As a rough estimate, I have approximately 135 completed runs, of which 110 of them are parent runs, the remaining 25 comprising of completed attempted training runs for a CM-ready finalised unit. For these finalised builds, a significant portion (I’d estimate most likely over half) of them are ended early (colloquially referred to as ‘doored’). An optimistic estimate would be that I door at least half of my runs (this is not an exaggeration), which would put the final amount of career attempts so far at a whopping 160 (and still not done). This sounds ridiculous, and quite frankly if you look at it this way it somewhat is, but I know of several jp PvP-oriented players who put up far higher numbers than I do. Another way of looking at it, is that in current JP there is a special event where you can borrow 15 veteran umas daily instead of the regular limit. I, along with quite a few other JP players, consistently burn through all 15 on most days.
So, what does this mean for you, dear reader? It means that I am asking you to take a moment, think about the time commitment it would take for you to compete at the highest levels in Uma PvP, and ask yourself if you really want to do it. It’s perfectly fine to play the game for the wide cast of characters and stories for you to enjoy, and doing well at PvP does not convey any meaningful benefit beyond a cosmetic title and clout. But, should you choose to compete in serious multiplayer competition in this game at the highest levels, be prepared to at least buy some paid items such as the monthly passes, because the alternative is arguably far less enticing to most (and certainly to me), and even with that still invest a significant chunk of your time into metaphorically banging your head against a brick wall and expecting the wall to give. There are lower levels of competition available in these PvP events, and it’s perfectly fine to play in them, but I’m just tired of seeing rosy-eyed players in global still new to the game thinking that they would be able to keep up long term without any form of significant investment, be it time, money, or more realistically, both.
Maybe I’m just a jaded JP player who has spent too much time grinding for these PvP events, but even so I urge you, to at least take a moment to consider for yourself, is this endless pit worth throwing your time into for. The game is truly great in so many other places, the franchise is full of other media for you to check out, but please do not burn yourself out two months in because you wanted to chase the bleeding edge from the get-go without being properly informed.
And with that, on with the rest of the guide.”
Chapter 3.5: Quant Edition
Welcome to the advanced section, this is largely from the following non-exhaustive list of documentation from the JP server, advice from JP discussions and channels as well as my own experience playing on JP. If you want to ask me questions or have any suggestions/c corrections I’m usually floating around the JP channels on the unofficial umacord, or you can dm me on discord (quantumfury)
With thanks from:
Uma Musume Mechanics – KuromiAK’s Race Mechanic document
Uma Musume Reference – Erzzy’s big uma bible (reference doc)
Umamusume Global Reference Document - Last Updated 07/15/2025 for the global version
Now with that, let’s get down to brass tacks
Introduction and Assumptions
This entire section is for (slightly) more detailed information, assuming that you have played the game for a fair amount of time and are now looking to understand a bit more about how the races actually work, why we recommend the cards that we do, and, ultimately, how to win your races.
This guide is written assuming you have read chapter 2 of this guide, are starting out of the gate (haha) with global experience only, and you have NOT read both of the documents listed above. If you have already read the race mechanic and reference doc, this summary should largely be redundant.
Also you could just read Erzzy’s reference document, it covers the exact points I’m about to rehash out again but hey, to use a Japanese term, 仕方がない
Building From the Ground Up
I’m going to go against the grain slightly and go about it backwards by explaining how the game actually works first instead of prescribing concrete rules. There is honestly so much misinformation floating around global communities, and so much variation in any individual account that anything dictated by a cookie cutter directive is inefficient at best, actively detrimental at worst in my experience.
With that out of the way, let’s begin first with:
How Races Actually Work
Basic Mechanics
The game is really bad at explaining how the game mechanics function, which has led to a lot of misguided build crafting ideas and theories. This was even more so the case during the original launch of the JP servers, however the actual mechanics have been datamined over time.
Races can be largely divided into 4 notable phases, the opening, the mid-leg, the final leg, and the final spurt. These phases are differentiable from the progress bar at the top of the race screen, with the final spurt (phase) occurring when the progress bar disappears entirely at the end of a race. Note that these phases are not necessarily directly linked with what your horse is actually doing, but rather satisfy skill proc conditions (for example, Homestretch Haste will only activate during final spurt).
On that note, what your uma is actually doing is summarised into 3 phases. Before that however, a few terms have to be defined. The 3 that matters here is:
1. Target Speed – The speed at which your uma will attempt to run at. Will immediately accelerate or decelerate to try to attain this specific speed if the current speed is different.
2. Current Speed – The speed of your uma at any instance of time.
3. Acceleration – The rate of change of your current speed in the positive direction, largely determined by your power stat and skills.
At the start of the race, when they are accelerating from the start to their target mid-race speed, then they are maintaining that speed until the beginning of their final spurt (not to be confused with the final spurt phase of the race) where the target speed increases from the midleg target speed to the final spurt speed. Now here’s the funky thing:
Your speed stat does nothing during the opening and mid-leg phases of the race
This statement might sound crazy, it might sound extremely counterintuitive, but it is true. During the opening and midleg phases of the race, your base speed is entirely independent of your statline. Instead, it is a fixed number that is modified by a coefficient depending on the strategy selected.
This base speed figure is then modified depending on whether there is a slope, any skills that you have activated, whether you have any lane movement effects active, and a special mechanic called position keeping. In short, this is a mechanic where your uma will, depending on their wit stat, adjust their speed in order to establish and maintain a certain desired position depending on the strategy selected. I won’t elaborate more here for the sake of brevity, but if you are interested do give the mechanics document a read. The combined effects of all of these modifiers are then given as your target speed. This target speed is then adjusted with a random modifier dependent on your wit stat.
So where does speed come in? Why is it so important if it doesn’t do anything for over half the race?
It all comes down to the final spurt. But before that we need to talk about…
Stamina and You
In essence, your uma has a certain amount of ‘HP’ during a race (take that for what you will). Your stamina is directly converted into maximum HP with modifiers for distance and strategy, and you begin each race with 100% HP.
You then consume HP during the race, at a rate that is largely determined by your current speed, special modifiers depending on race statuses such as rushed or position-keeping related effects.
During the final leg and beyond, your HP drain is then modified by a multiplier depending on your guts stat. Since this is literally the only relevant thing guts does, it’s why the general advice is that guts is (currently) useless, largely because you could just train stamina instead (especially given that clicking stamina also gives guts).
If you run out of stamina at any point, you immediately begin decelerating down to a minimum speed value, calculated off your guts stat. Note that this speed is always significantly lower than your normal speeds, which makes running out of hp (often termed dying for obvious reasons) lethal to your race performance.
Note that there is no current benefit to finishing a race with excess stamina, and additionally no way to burn additional stamina for benefit. You only require exactly enough stamina to survive the race, and anything remaining incurs an opportunity cost during training.
Now with that out of the way, we can explain:
Final Spurt
Assuming stamina is not an issue, your final spurt target speed is calculated from your speed stat with modifiers given for distance and distance aptitude. The beginning of the final spurt is from the beginning of the final leg phase of the race if your uma has sufficient HP remaining to complete the final spurt without dying.
However, if your uma calculates that she does not have sufficient remaining HP to survive a full-length final spurt, she will then recalculate from a set of alternative spurt lengths and target speeds that will result in sufficient HP for the spurt. The accuracy of this recalculation depends on your wit stat. Note that as of the current global server implementation, final leg recovery skills do not initiate a recalculation of the final spurt with the additional hp. This means that it is critical for longer distance races to have sufficient stamina to ensure a full speed final spurt.
With the basic mechanics out of the way, how do we win races with this information?
Well…
- Not dying (in order to…)
- Have a higher top speed during final spurt (By increasing speed stat)
- Accelerating to that top speed (With power and skills)
- Short term speed skills
3 out of the 4 points there are fairly self-explanatory, but one of the factors (Acceleration to be specific) has a heavy load of nuance attached with it.
Raising power stat is always good, assuming you don’t have issues with prior points, however as the global server isn’t yet doing drugs on a deserted island for penta-capped statlines (true story) it’s impractical to have maxed speed, sufficient stamina to survive all but the shortest race categories, and capped power (especially without fully maxed cards). So, we turn instead to skills… except global currently also has a critical shortage of good acceleration skill options. As of the time of writing, there are zero consistently applicable acceleration skills, with the closest being Maruzensky’s ultimate. It’s a huge part of why Seiun Sky’s ultimate is so strong, as it is a near-universal acceleration skill for front runners, and why Narita Taishin is also quite strong, as she has access to an extremely consistent (in comparison anyways…) acceleration skill for end closers.
These skills are extremely strong as they activate exactly at the beginning of a full length final spurt, when it is the most effective. As strong acceleration skills often have quite short durations, any delay to the proc timing away from perfect will drastically affect the efficacy of the skill. This ultimately means that for random acceleration skills, you’re coin flipping the skill to activate at the correct time, otherwise it becomes useless. And at the current moment on global, the vast majority of acceleration options are random acceleration skills.
Which ultimately brings us to the crux of the issue, that in all our core acceleration skills are inconsistent at best, to being almost completely unusable at worst. Which ultimately means for the current state of global, as of the 19th of June 2025 at the time of writing, to be largely focused around generic speed skills (harikitte ikou!) and getting as high of a statline as practically achievable. This sounds pretty boring, and to be honest as a JP player it is, but it is the current reality of the server. I’ll come back and change this when CM is announced and we have access to some real skills and build at that time, but as of now there isn’t really a whole lot more to add at this point. With the theory out of the way, how do we actually go about applying it?
Deckbuilding
“Hello if you skipped here from the table of contents, please go and read the previous section, this won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t.” - Quant
Anyways, with the theoretical understanding as a foundation, the deckbuilding constraints falls pretty naturally in place. We’re looking for:
- Enough stamina to not die
- As much speed as possible (Ideally capping to 1200 exactly)
- As much power and wit as possible, given capped speed
Which brings us to the deck:
We’re going to start with a core of 2 speed cards, one of which is Kitasan Black at 3lb or higher (Not negotiable).
Then, depending on your specific stamina cards that you have access to, and the distances of the races you’re expected to run in, we’re going to add in stamina cards until we can comfortably gain enough stamina to survive. This should be 1-3 cards, depending on the distance and how good your cards are. Play around with it, and develop a feel for what feels good for the distances you’re racing in.
Finally, we have a few slots remaining, and we are going to fill it with speed, wit, and/or power cards. A rough guide is that you’re looking for the best cards you have available between the 3, you’re looking to add enough speed cards to start comfortably approaching the speed card, then 1-2 wit cards (usually only 1) in order to train wit and finally filling with power cards if neither case applies. The reason we prioritise wit cards is that although power is arguably a stronger stat at this point of the game, the only way to train wit is by actually clicking wit, whereas power can be obtained as cross training from speed. Additionally, wit cards represent one of the few sources of skill point bonuses in the game at this stage and also increase the healing from clicking a rainbow WIT training. These factors are a significant advantage over a regular power card, which kinda doesn’t actually do a lot as clicking power is quite subpar in comparison. Your final deck might look something for a medium race with MLB cards:
If you really, absolutely, cannot live without a tier list or hard numerical comparisons then you can give the card score spreadsheet a go but honestly it doesn’t make too much of a difference at this stage, especially if your cards are not at mlb yet. Almost every mlb card is by far and alot stronger than 0-2lb options, even across rarities (excluding R rarity grey cards).
If you are struggling to win races, have a look at your statline, the distance of the race you’re racing in, and with the theoretical foundation try and diagnose the issue for yourself, it will almost always be either you didn’t have sufficient speed or you died on the final spurt during career. Either that or you got unlucky and got blocked.
(lmao rekt n00b ff go next no re)
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Additional Notes and Visual Aids
(Image omitted: Card icons illustrating deck constraints)
If you really, absolutely, cannot live without a tier list or hard numerical comparisons then you can give the card score spreadsheet a go but honestly it doesn’t make too much of a difference at this stage, especially if your cards are not at mlb yet. Almost every mlb card is by far and alot stronger than 0-2lb options, even across rarities (excluding R rarity grey cards).
If you are struggling to win races, have a look at your statline, the distance of the race you’re racing in, and with the theoretical foundation try and diagnose the issue for yourself, it will almost always be either you didn’t have sufficient speed or you died on the final spurt during career. Either that or you got unlucky and got blocked.
(lmao rekt n00b ff go next no re)