Support Card Builds
What build should I do for X distance?
In general, you shouldn’t have more than two types of cards in your URA deck (Friends aside; you can replace a Speed with Tazuna/Aoi in these). In such a low strength scenario, it’s better to stay focused. It’s also very hard to use Wit cards in URA and make competitive umas, unless you’re whaling every card. Save those for later.
These are made with PvP in mind. Winning Career is pretty simple with decent cards. The enemy umas aren’t very strong, and you have a secret +400 All Stats boost which makes Stamina much less important during training. In terms of importance with these goals, it’s Stamina > Speed > Power > Wit > Guts, for every distance. Stamina is the most important stat, but it has a hard cap on each distance after which it does nothing. When you’re far below that cap, getting more Stamina is better than more Speed.
In the future, with more powerful scenarios, Wit cards are used everywhere, Guts cards have their times to shine, and in MANT, the types of the cards don't even matter, only their race bonus. Things will change as the game goes on. Don't destroy your Wit and Guts cards just because they're not shown here yet.
Sprint
Inherit Wit and some Stamina. Target: 1200/500/1200/300/500
Sprint is the first distance you can start trying Wit cards in. If you have a +63 Power parent of your own, you can inherit full power and try 4 Speed 2 Wit for Team Trials, but raising the Stamina can be a bit hard. If you can’t get 500 Stamina 900 Power, stick with Speed/Power.
Mile / Dirt
Inherit Stamina. Target: 1200/800/900/300/400, or 1200/600/1000/300/400 + 1 Golden Recovery Skill
You can also use a Stamina card instead and inherit Power, if you lack any good Power cards.
Medium
Inherit Power. Target: 1200/900/800/300/400 + Swinging Maestro
A full Stamina inherit along with the Vodka power card for a recovery might also work.
Long
Inherit Power. Target: 900/1200/600/400/400 + 2-3 Golden Recovery Skills
*Note: Iron Will (鋼の意志) doesn’t count as a Golden Recovery Skill. Don’t take it. Adrenaline Rush (from the Rice welfare) also does nothing on Global currently.
The Mejiro McQueen card you get from the story is very useful here.
That may seem extreme, but I can’t stress enough, Stamina is more important than Speed. 1200 Speed 500 Stamina is 3 seconds (~30 lengths) slower than 500 Speed 1200 Stamina on Tennosho Spring (3200m). You lose so much speed when out of stamina. You can win Career with less, but your performance in PvP will be much worse. See Stamina vs Speed.
What build should I do for X uma?
I don’t know. What distance are you building her for? None of the current umas have any unique build requirements, aside from making Debuffers.
What build should I do for X style?
Refer to the above section. The various styles don’t actually change the stats you want in any meaningful way. Reaching the Stamina goal is always the most important, then having more Speed is always better than having more Power (as long as your Power isn’t super low), etc. All it changes is which cards you bring, to give skills for that style, e.g. Eishin Flash as a Speed card for Late Surger skills, or Narita Taishin as a Speed card for End Closer skills. Late/End umas do not value Power over Speed.
Exception - Super Creek
Super Creek can’t use the Super Creek card. However, her unique skill is as strong as a Golden Recovery if she’s at 3 stars or more, and she can get Swinging Maestro from being level 5. You can just use strong Stamina cards to replace the Creek in the build.
Debuff Builds
Debuff builds are typically only used in Champion’s Meeting settings. For normal Team Trials PvP, they aren’t desirable. They give up on winning to help your other umas win.
These builds don’t need any stat other than Wisdom and enough Power to stay in the race. Speed, Stamina, and Guts don’t matter, though you want enough of them to win the training, to have the most turns to get hints and maximum skill points. Aoi is also useful, as her dates give a ton of skill points for days when you have no rainbows, especially since winning G1s is hard.
There are two types of debuffers. Speed debuffers, which slow down the enemies, and Stamina debuffers, which try to completely kill the enemies. Speed debuffs always work, while Stamina debuffs are stronger when they do work. Speed debuffs are generally the same strength as a negative speed skill, while Stamina debuffs can completely ruin the uma.
Both kinds of debuffers can get the whites for both strategies. For Speed debuffs, the whites are called Hesitant. For Stamina, they are Flustered and Subdued. To find which cards give these, you can check Gametora and search for these terms, then click the “More.” A notable card is Symboli Rudolf, who gives all four Subdued skills from hints. When training, you mostly click any hint that can give a debuff. If it gives a different skill, buy it to take it out of the pool.
The best Speed debuffers tend to be End Closers, as they can get Petrifying Gaze. There are two notable Distance-specific Speed debuffs, Dominator for Medium and Keen Eye for Mile (once buffed). The best umas in this role have either Petrifying Gaze or Dominator, so umas like Sweep Tosho, Grass Wonder, Nice Nature (Cheerleader), Symboli Rudolf, and so on.
The best Stamina debuffers tend to be Late Surgers, as they can get All-Seeing Eyes. There are also two notable Distance-specific Stamina debuffs, Mystifying Murmur for Medium and Stamina Siphon for Long. Mystifying Murmur is the strongest, so umas like Nice Nature and Mayano (Bride) are great for this role.
Debuffers will almost always want to inherit Summer Gold Ship’s unique, 564, once she releases. The unique activates a random gold skill. Your debuffers should avoid buying any gold skills other than debuffs. This unique can let you use more debuffs. For example, Grass Wonder in Medium distance can borrow Gold City Speed to get Keen Eye (gains a speed debuff in a later update), then use 564 to trigger it. Even if all your golds can activate on the track, you still want 564, as it can trigger a debuff that failed a Wit check, increasing your consistency.
The other debuff skills, such as Trick or Frenzied, aren’t as impactful and you don’t have to worry about getting them. Frenzied extends the Rushed debuff and actually makes your opponents stronger if they survive (as Rushed increases speed).
Another style in End Closer-heavy metas can be to purposely lower your Power to below 100. This makes it so the End Closers can’t trigger the Sleeping Lion recovery. You can also just pick an uma who has bad aptitudes for the track, like Urara.
What about Guts cards?
Don’t use those, unless it’s a 3 Guts 3 Wit meme build to try to get a high grade for the achievement. Guts doesn’t scale well into high numbers, so your umas will be weaker than their grade implies and you’ll end up fighting stronger PvP opponents that have actual stats and lose a lot. In later Scenarios, Guts cards can be used and sometimes are the best choice, but in URA it’s not a good idea.
One exception is Ines Fujin, who gives a Golden Recovery Skill that’s exclusive to Front Runners. Also, the free Urara card is pretty generically good, you can just throw her into a build to replace a weak card and not click Guts – she’s basically a Friend card and will be meta in scenario 3.
What about Wit cards?
Wit cards are very useful at the higher end of the game. When you’re starting out, you can’t afford to use them. Once you have good MLB cards, such as Kitasan Black, and parents that are giving you +63 Power or Stamina, you can start phasing out your Power cards in favour of Wit cards. Especially in Team Trials where your scoring is based on how frequently you activate your skills. Though, sometimes continuing to use Power cards and inheriting Wit instead is also good and viable.
What about Friend cards?
Friend cards are often short lived but very powerful in their respective scenarios. However, you need a strong deck to support them, as they give little stats on their own. Aoi can be used when making parents, as she gives lots of skill points to buy more skills for more white sparks. Tazuna is strong for her Concentration skill, which can be used by any uma in Team Trials for easy points. Once your cards are at MLB, try slipping in a friend card and see how it goes.
In the next scenario, Aoharu, there will be a friend card called Riko that is extremely strong in Aoharu. You will even use her Rare version in your builds if you don’t have her SSR. She’s probably the longest lived Friend card, remaining useful in scenario 3 for longer distances, and technically usable in the fourth scenario but falls off in favour of Light Hello, who then falls off and is replaced by the Goddesses, and so on.
Consistency vs Perfection
A build like 5 Speed 1 Power is very consistent. You’ll be able to get 1200 Speed 800 Power more often than not. Umas like this are pretty good. If you want truly great umas, such as 1200 Speed 1200 Power, you’ll have to get lucky and take riskier builds, like 4 Speed 2 Power, or sometimes even builds like 3 Speed 2 Power 1 Stamina or 2 Speed 2 Power 2 Stamina. The less focused the build, the less consistent. Builds like these demand max limit breaks, or at least close to it.
These are much more difficult. You’ll have a lot of runs where you just don’t get enough rainbows. You’ll have to go through tons of training runs. For example, look at the player Pxy, who wanted an amazing Bourbon.
We can see at least 30 Bourbons in that screenshot alone. There are surely countless others down below. So, when making a build, decide if you want to invest a lot of time for a great uma, or just get a good uma in a few runs. Know what your goal is, and choose cards based on that.
This idea applies to events in-game, too. If you have the choice between 10 energy, or 30 energy and maybe a sickness, then for consistency you’d choose the former. But when going for the best, you would take the 30 and simply hope it didn’t debuff you.