The best Umamusume: Pretty Derby builds for each horse girl

When it comes to winning races and completing careers, knowing the best Umamusume: Pretty Derby builds for each horse girl is vital to victory. If you're all willy-nilly with your training or dumping everything into a single stat, you're more than likely going to struggle to see the finish line.

When it comes to Umamusume, you might think you'd have to memorise specialised strategies for each horse girl. Thankfully, that's not the case. While each one has their own quirks and unique abilities, every single character can be built for victory with similar methods.

It's best to split things up based on two factors: race distance and running style. There are four lengths—Sprint, Mile, Medium and Long—and four running strategies—Front Runner, Pace Chaser, Late Surger, and End Closer. A racetrack's length is by far the most important thing to pay attention to, however, as you can sometimes shoehorn girls into styles they're not particularly adept with and still win races.

Training priorities largely hinge on which of these your horse girl has the highest grade in, though there are notable exceptions which I've listed below. For the most part, I've been following these rough guidelines for each of my career runs and I've found a pretty high success rate off the back of it.

Note that these are tips for completing careers and NOT for the Team Trials PvP mode. These often require more specialised builds and a lot of trial and error. So without further ado, here are some handy baseline builds you can follow and hopefully come out on top every time.

Best Umamusume builds

Best Umamusume: Pretty Derby Sprint build

• Good for: Haru Urara, Taiki Shuttle, Curren Chan

There aren't many Sprint horse girls in Umamusume right now so you likely won't have to build them often, but they're thankfully fairly simple when you do.

As the name implies, Sprint horse girls usually don't have to run for very long. That means you can deprioritise Stamina and mostly get to work on Speed with a bit of time spent on Power and Wit. Speed will help with, well, your maximum speed, while Power helps with acceleration, turning, and the ability to pass other Umas. Wit helps your activation of skills, so it's always worth spending a couple of turns on it.

If you have your horse girl as a Front Runner, you can deprioritise Power, but don't ignore it entirely. If she's a Pace Chaser, Late Surger, or End Closer, you'll need to focus on it a little more to push through the crowd and make it into first place.

As I mentioned in my Umamusume tips guide,, you can essentially ignore Guts entirely right now. It's an expendable resource rather than a stat increase, and your turns are better spent distributing points among the other four.

For skill cards, try to bring three or four Speed cards, one Stamina card, and one Wit card. You can swap out a Speed card for Power or another stat, but you'll want the majority of your rainbow training to be happening there.

A good baseline for Sprint horse girls is around 900 Speed, 250 Stamina, 450 Power, and 300 Wit. Above is my beloved Haru Urara nailing the URA Finale Finals with slightly higher Stamina and Power.

Best Umamusume: Pretty Derby Mile build

• Good for: Grass Wonder, Marunzensky, Vodka

Something you'll find in Umamusume is that a lot of horse girls will tend to specialise in two lengths, and Mile is a common distance across many of the characters right now.

It's most commonly paired with the Medium length, though a handful like Taiki Shuttle and Marunzensky have high aptitude in Sprint and Mile. How you train Mile girls boils down to their secondary distance and career races, though you won't have to tweak too much between the two.

Largely, you still want a relatively high Speed stat, but with a little more emphasis on Stamina. It helps your horse girl keep pace, and too little of it will see her slow down significantly towards the end of a race.

Power is still important too, though it'll once again fluctuate depending on your running strategy. The more a running strategy positions you to the front, the less important the stat is.

For skill cards, make sure to have three Speed cards, one Stamina card, one Power card, and one Wit card. The final card is up to you—I'd recommend another Speed or Stamina if your horse girl is a Front Runner, or another Speed or Power card if she's a Pace Chaser or beyond.

A good baseline for Mile horse girls is around 850 Speed, 350 Stamina, 450 Power, and 300 Wit. Above is a Grass Wonder I successfully completed a career with for comparison.

Best Umamusume: Pretty Derby Medium build

• Good for: Mihono Bourbon, T.M. Opera O, Oguri Cap, Silence Suzuka, El Condor Pasa

Medium is another common distance right now, paired with either Mile or Long. You'll want a slightly more balanced stat distribution between the big three, though Speed still remains important.

You'll want more Stamina to keep up with Medium distances, though. Speed can only help you so much and if you've got nothing in the tank, you'll quickly fall behind. If your horse girl's career has a lot of Medium or Long races in it, make sure you're paying close attention to your Stamina stat and maybe supplement it with skills like Swinging Maestro.

For skill cards, it's good to bring three Speed cards, one Stamina card, one Power card, and one Wit card. You can swap out the Wit for another Stamina if you like.

A good baseline for Medium horse girls is around 800 Speed, 450 Stamina, 500 Power, and 300 Wit. Above is a T.M. Opera O I have with slightly higher stats than that, but who performed incredibly well.

Best Umamusume: Pretty Derby Long build

• Good for: Rice Shower, Mayano Top Gun, Gold Ship, Super Creek

Long distances are the most gruelling and perhaps require the most foreplanning right now, as you'll need a very balanced training distribution to make sure you can outpace and outlast all the other horse girls. It's all too easy to accidentally put too many points into Speed and then watch her falter on the final straight.

That means Speed takes less of a priority here in favour of Stamina—keep the latter roughly 50-100 points under the former—and once again Power will depend on which running strategy your horse girl is favouring. It's still mighty important to train for good turning and positioning though, so don't neglect it.

For skill cards, I recommend something similar to Mile and Medium: Three Speed cards, two Stamina cards, one Power card. If you want a Wit card, you can always swap out a Stamina card for it and supplement with Stamina skills like Swinging Maestro instead.

A good baseline for Long distance horse girls is around 750 Speed, 650 Stamina, 500 Power, and 300 Wit. This Gold Ship of mine accidentally ended up with a pretty wild Power stat, but was a champion nonetheless.

Special exceptions (Sakura Bakushin O)

The power of Bakushin is so enormous that she'll likely be the first horse girl you carry to victory in Career mode. That's because all but one of her races that require you to get a specific placement are Sprint, so you don't have to stress about training for different aptitudes apart from getting first in the final Mile race.

That means you can essentially build her into a lean, mean Speed machine—give her five Speed cards and a single Wit card for skill activation and boosts to Energy recovery for her deck.

Then, you essentially want to train Speed at every given opportunity. If there are multiple horse girls grouped up in a different stat, train that in order to increase your friendship gauge and reach rainbow training sessions sooner for even more Bakushin.

Hit the occasional Wit training for some Energy regain and work on maxing out your Speed stat. Unless things go horribly wrong, you should find yourself flying through every race—bar a likely hiccup in the Spring Stakes Mile race, which you thankfully don't have to place in—and come out as an URA Finale champion.

Will she be dominating any Team Trials races? Absolutely not, but if you're after an easy career win and a high rank, it's absolute Bakushin.