Track Analysis Guide

Different aspects of the track can change each skill’s effectiveness by a very significant margin, understanding how to take advantage of each track’s characteristics is crucial to determining which skills are good and which skills are not.

Some tracks have hidden stat thresholds. It could be one or two stats.

Here’s the hidden stat threshold table, by hitting those, you gain that % of

bonus as a multiplier. When there’s only one stat threshold the bonus is doubled.

If there’s only one stat and you have 901+ of it, you’ll gain a 40%

bonus. If there are two and you have 300 of one and 901+ of the other, you’ll gain a 25% bonus.

We’ll be using the global Umalator tool to help visualize the tracks and what skills are good on it.

The tool can be found here.

Races are divided into 4 sections, Opening Leg is the first 1/6th of the race, Middle Leg is the 3/6th following that, Final Leg is the next 1/6th, and Last Spurt is the final 1/6th of the race.

The code refers to these as phases, you might find these in skill activation conditions, Opening Leg is phase 0, Middle Leg is phase 1, Final Leg is phase 2 and Last Spurt is phase 3.

Each style has a different speed coefficient at each phase.

In general, Umas will run faster in the later phases when compared to the earlier ones, with the exception of Front Runners that run faster in Opening Leg when compared to Middle Leg.

Style Phase Coefficient

You might’ve noticed that some styles actually have a lower Coefficient in Final Leg + Last Spurt when compared to Middle Leg. Wouldn’t that mean they run slower there?

This is where your

stat comes into play.

The speed of Umas in Opening Leg and Middle Leg mostly just depend on the Style Phase Coefficient, with the Wit stat affecting it a little.

The speed of Umas in the Final Leg + Last Spurt however, follows a formula which roughly involves your

stat multiplied by Style Phase Coefficient, and other extra modifiers such as distance S.

Since Final Leg and Last Spurt use the same coefficient, outside of skill activation timings, they can be considered the same phase.

Since Umas run faster in later phases, Opening Leg and Middle Leg speed skills are generally more powerful as the relative speed increase is higher.

• Once the Uma enters Final Leg, they will start accelerating to top speed (or Target Speed).
• Speed skills that activate while the Uma is accelerating will do nothing, as they only boost top speed.
• Once the Uma finishes accelerating, speed skills will be useful again.
• Conversely, acceleration skills that activate around or at the start of Final Leg are extremely powerful, and are often the main decider of races.
• The strongest acceleration skills tend to activate as soon as the Uma enters Final leg, and triggers depending on whether it’s a corner or a straight, so this is generally the most important factor to determining the “mandatory” acceleration skill(s) for certain tracks.

Instant Acceleration Skills

• 

  Angling and Scheming
  (
  
  Seiun Sky’s unique skill)
• Activates when entering Final Leg, if it’s on a corner and the Uma is 1st place
• 

  Let's Pump Some Iron!
  (
  
  Mejiro Ryan’s unique skill)
• Activates when entering Final leg, if it’s on a corner and the Uma is 6th place (in CM)
• 

  Straightaway Spurt
  /
  

  Encroaching Shadow
• Activates when entering Final Leg, if it’s on a straight

The blue line in the above graph is an Uma with

activated, while the red line doesn’t have it.

The blue line reaches top speed much faster, and wins the race.

It might not look that significant on the graph, but on average it’s a 3.12 horselength difference, which is about 7.5m.

Other notable Acceleration Skills

• 

  Red Shift/LP1211-M
  (
  
  Maruzensky’s unique skill) /
  

  Shooting for Victory!
  (
  
  Taiki Shuttle’s unique skill)
• Activates on the Final corner, with slightly different position requirements
• Condor’s Fury (
  
  Fantasy El Condor Pasa’s unique skill)/Flowery✰Manuever (
  
  Wedding Mayano Top Gun’s unique skill)
• Also activate on the Final Corner, but they have extra requirements so the activation tends to be a bit delayed
• 

  Victoria por plancha ☆
  (
  
  El Condor Pasa’s unique skill)
• Activates on the Final straight, is a speed/acceleration hybrid skill
• 

  Highlander
  and
  

  Determined Descent
• Activates on first uphill/downhill respectively

Random Acceleration Skills

Random acceleration skills can’t really be controlled, so they tend to be gambling skills that are only taken as a last resort, or if there aren’t enough acceleration tools available on the track.

They are still very powerful in Sprint or Mile, acceleration skills in general are significantly more powerful for those distances as the Uma have less time to run at top speed.

There are a ton of these and will be mentioned in the Champion’s Meeting guides if they are good.

Acceleration in Action

This chart is created with the track used for Taurus cup (Tokyo 2400m), which will be our example.

The trigger points for

,

Let's Pump Some Iron!

,

Angling and Scheming

and

Shooting for Victory!

have been marked on the chart.

Since Final Leg starts on a corner,

+

Let's Pump Some Iron!

will activate instantly (provided the other activation conditions are satisfied), making them the strongest acceleration tools on the track.

and

Shooting for Victory!

are delayed by 25m, but are still exceptionally powerful.

Raising your speed slightly before Final Leg and entering it with that active is also very powerful.

It could be compared to pseudo acceleration as starting on a higher speed before Final Leg means you need to accelerate less to hit top speed during it.

Example

Uma is running at 20 m/s in Mid Leg and is trying to reach 25 m/s in Final Leg.

With an acceleration of 0.1 m/s/s

It would take them (25-20) / 0.1 = 50 seconds to accelerate to top speed.

Uma activates a unique near end of Mid Leg which makes them 0.35 m/s faster.

They end up starting Final leg at 20.35 m/s and the other parameters remain the same.

It would take them (25-20.35) / 0.1 = 46.5 seconds to accelerate to top speed.

As you can see, a well timed speed skill can reduce the time it takes to get to top speed by a fair bit, and this is without factoring in the distance gained from the speed skill in the first place.

This is Nakayama 2000m, it will be the future Aries cup track unless changed, we’ll use this to illustrate how this mechanic works.

If

activates here and is the 3rd skill activation in Mid Leg,

Tail Held High

will activate.

The skill duration will last just long enough to connect the speed into the Final Leg, making it more powerful than usual, since most of the speed skill’s value has been expended in Mid Leg while still getting the carryover effect in Final Leg.

Some skills will carryover randomly, but currently there aren't too many ways to leverage this mechanic.

This will become more relevant as they introduce more skills, and a certain Oguri of the Christmas variety will be abusing this mechanic.

For the final example, we’ll use Chuukyo 1200m.

There are quite a few characteristics on this track that makes it unique.

What we can immediately notice here is that the Final Leg begins on a straight and it begins shortly after the Final Straight begins, this means:

• 

  Let's Pump Some Iron!
  and
  

  Angling and Scheming
  will not be usable on this track.
• 

  Straightaway Spurt
  /
  

  Encroaching Shadow
  will be some of the best acceleration tools.

The first Uphill is not too far away from the start of the Final Leg, this makes

a very strong generic acceleration tool that any style can use.

Since the Final Straight is slightly before start of Final Leg,

(which is a speed/acceleration hybrid skill) will activate at the 788m mark. It will provide a nice speed boost for the 12m leading into Final Leg, carryover the speed and provide acceleration after that, making it a big boost for Front Runners and Pace Chasers.

Also notable that since there are only 2 straights on the track and Umas will be accelerating during a good portion of Final Straight, straight speed skills such as Straightaway Adept have a decent chance of being wasted.

There are also some cool strategies, such as one with

Smart Falcon. Her Unique skill is a speed/acceleration hybrid skill that triggers in Mid Leg, when she’s first, on a straight, and being approached by another Uma from behind. Most of the time it’ll trigger at the 200-300m mark, but if it doesn’t, it can trigger at the 788-799m mark, meaning you’ll get a similar effect to

Victoria por plancha ☆

, where you get value off both the speed and the acceleration portion of the unique.

She’s not the most meta pick on this track, but it’s a neat way to win if you like her and want to use her.

Having a good grasp of how to analyze tracks can help you get an edge on your less informed opponents, or discover cool ways to get your favourites to win.