Preparing For CM (For Lazy People)

I am a very lazy uma player. I don’t do my dailies. I don’t spend my RP. Rarely will I complete more than 10-15 training runs for a CM, and that’s including both the parents and the actual racers, and that was the case on JP too. But, I consistently make A Finals.

In Taurus Cup, I ran a team of Taiki/Daiwa/Nature. Because of this, I didn’t even need to train any parents. I had a 7* Stamina parent lying around and used her along with a borrowed Maruzensky. Taiki doesn’t need to inherit her own ult, and Daiwa doesn’t need Taiki’s either, so I had no reason to train a parent.

The number of runs I finished was 3 for Nature, 2 for Daiwa, and 4 for Taiki. Basically, I stop when I get a run that hits Distance S (and whatever mandatory skills there are, but there were none this time). Could I have put in more effort and gotten first? No, I don’t actually think so, my final room was 2 Pace 1 Front (my own umas included), so neither Taiki nor Daiwa were really capable of winning, and an Oguri won instead. Even if I’d made my Daiwa and Taiki better it wouldn’t have changed anything, I believe. Heck, maybe Taiki being WORSE would have let her be 3rd place and use her ult. Or if I ran Nature as a Front? I could have used my pick ticket on Maru and won, but I’m saving that for a rainy day.

And, even if I could, the difference is like, 500 Carats and two pink tickets. Not something I’m super motivated to dedicate a lot of time to get, even if it was guaranteed.

So, let’s go over the process of “minimum effort CM training.”

First, parenting. In most CMs, you will want to prepare one parent of your own. In the simplest case, this is a parent with a good unique and with a 2* Pink for the distance. You don’t need a 3* Blue, you don’t need race-specific whites, even affinity doesn’t matter that much though it’s nice to have. +50 stats aren’t going to change your winrate that much, and you could probably get them by training your racing uma more times instead of making more parents anyway.

If you were training for Gemini Cup (3200m), then you’d want something like a Rudolf with 2* Long. When doing this, borrow a parent with 3* Long and a 3* Blue that you want (likely Stamina in the case of Gemini) to be the grandparent. Or, if you’re making someone like Teio or Oguri into an End Closer, get 3* End as the pink to raise the aptitude, which is better to do on grandparents. Getting the correct 2* Pink will take about twice as many runs as your uma has A aptitudes. So, about 10 runs on an Oguri, or 6 runs on a Teio, assuming the grandparents didn’t up any of them to A. You can use that to guide which uma you’re making yourself and which you’re borrowing. Double these again if you also want a 2* Blue to go along with it. Then, multiply by 5 if you want a specific blue, and you can see how this ends up taking forever.

If you wanted to run Gold Ship in Taurus, the parents you needed were Taiki and Maru. Looking at their aptitudes, that means a Maru would be 8 runs on average, and a Taiki would be 10 (keeping in mind you need to raise the Medium aptitude to A to get the pink). If you had both, you could train Maru and then borrow Taiki to save a bit of time.

Sometimes there are required skills. On Gemini, that’s Straightaway Spurt. This is a very annoying skill to get for umas who aren’t Taishin. Find that on the grandparent as well. (If you can’t find a perfect candidate for a grandparent, reduce the pink to 2* in your search, then the white. Don’t ever lower the blue.) You should also put as many cards into your deck that give it as possible. Hishi Amazon and Gold Ship, in this scenario. If you get the white as a spark, that’s gonna help your consistency a lot, so it’s a nice bonus.

Pop quiz! What happens if we get the 2* Pink we want, but not the white? Do we keep training parents until we hit both?

No.

A 3* spark has about a 15% chance to trigger in your run, and you’ll ideally have it on the borrowed parent. Instead of doing more parent runs, you can just do more CM runs, and you’ll get the result faster. It’s maybe 6 extra runs to get lucky on the actual run, versus 40 parent runs to get the pink+white. By the same logic, you could even forgo getting the pink in the first place, but if you’re using the parent across multiple umas it’s probably worth it and could also be used in future CMs.

The key idea: Farming for whites/pinks will make your inheritance events more consistent, meaning more of your runs will be viable. But, the time it takes to get them is greater than the time it takes to just get lucky. Especially if you’re good enough at training that most of your runs are reaching the stat goals.

What if we get the white, but not the pink?

Since we need both, extra consistency on the skill is just as good as extra consistency on the S. Either one is fine, especially if the pink is still useful (matching style or ground type).

There are some exceptions to this for long-lived parents. For example, getting a good Seiun Sky with the Groundwork white will be useful for a very long time, and it might be worth going out of your way for one with a Front pink. I’m not really in a hurry though, Scenario 3 parents are much better than what we can make now. I mean, have you seen what they have on JP? Sheesh.

Next, training. As I said before, I basically consider it good when I get all the inheritance luck required, which is usually Distance S + some skill. Well, you need your support cards to finish their chains and give you their gold skills too. But once everything goes right like that, I’m done.

However, I do cull runs frequently. Uma fails her debut race? Quit the run. Uma has a bad rest and gets Night Owl in year 1? Quit the run. One hospital trip doesn’t cure Slow Metabolism? Yep, I’ll quit the run if it’s still early. When things happen in Year 3 it’s late enough that I’m willing to finish it and get the parent roll, but anything that ends up costing multiple turns early I’ll just quit and go again, without something like Charming to offset it.

I know some people who quit even more often. They might quit if the first inheritance event doesn’t give S, if they didn’t unlock dates with their pal card in year 1, or even if the very first turn is bad. Adjust to your taste. The scenario will also play a factor. Scenario 3 is extremely consistent, with very long runs, so quitting if the first inheritance is bad makes more sense there.

Unless you’re really pressing up against the deadline for CM entry, you don’t need to invest your time into runs that are already bad. Even if all three of your borrowed parent runs crash early, you still have the next day. Better to spend 15 minutes and move on than 90. If you are near the deadline, switching your deck to be more consistent is valid, though I imagine if you play like this you’re already using consistent decks. You could use Aoi when training for Taurus Cup to make most runs viable, for example.

When it comes to team building, for now, Front Runners are the most intensive to raise. They have a huge list of skills to get on top of everything else. Groundwork and three greens now, then after the skill buffs, Position Sense, Dodging Danger, Early Lead... They’re the most rewarding strategy to put time into, but if you’re extra lazy, you might want to pass on them until Valentine’s Bourbon’s release, who is both the strongest Front Runner and one of the easiest to train.

Of course, reusing old umas can also cut down on your time investment needed. You really only ever need to train each debuffer once now, and then maybe again in Scenario 3 to get every debuff on each one. They don’t really make more debuff skills after that.

At the end of the day, getting to A finals is not very difficult if you’re using proper strategies, and if you’re reading this text, you certainly know what those are. Just scroll up to the previous section. At the finals, it’s just one race, anyone can win or lose. The difference between 3rd and 1st isn’t big enough to be worth burning yourself out to shift the odds a bit in your favour.