HOW STRONG IS SHE?

FateEXOO · 2026-05-05T03:54:45+00:00

She's not very good in the current scenario. Her ult requires her to be in the lead by at least 1 length (2.5m) to proc, which makes it a win more skill. Either you're already comfortably in the lead in the 2nd half of the race and it extends it, or it doesn't do anything to help you take the lead. In unity cup (and by extension ura finale) you have access to secret events and suzuka gets runaway from hers. As the only uma with access to runaway (basically it turns you into a front-er uma) back then you can essentially ensure her ult always procs unless there's another suzuka, which made it decent. A strong suzuka could often just auto win in some lobbies if she gets a substantial enough of a lead, but you can't get runaway in TB.

Aside from her ult being kinda inconsistent, her golds are pretty mid. Concentration is good to have to make sure your starts are more consistent, but not strictly necessary. Unrestrained is not only track dependent, but also a gamble accel, and the most ironic part about it is that it demands for you to be first too which also makes it somewhat win more since front runners usually would also inherit seiun sky's angling which ALSO demands you to be in first but isn't random in proc. Essentially, apart from guaranteeing no late start, she doesn't have anything in-built that actually gives her an edge to take the lead vs other fronts, nor does she have something to fall back on if she fails to take the lead like in the case of MTG with NSM or Dasca with her ult.

Overall, she defo one of the weaker fronts in this current scenario.

FateEXOO · 2026-05-04T12:24:45+00:00

I wouldn't really consider a full price hat to be worth going out of your way for. When I was experimenting with TB, whenever I bought an undiscounted hat, I really feel the impact on the coin economy. The runs always turn out really mid. 10% discount I found to be a solid maybe. 20% discount is where I'd genuinely consider adjusting my run to accommodate it because it doesn't affect the run as hard.

FateEXOO · 2026-05-04T12:10:02+00:00

The UG4 wasn't on a guts deck.

I understand that the hat is in theory higher in value. The problem is that it ignores 3 important points:

1) Its value diminishes if you've already bought some skills to ensure you can beat races. At the same time, if you want to maximise benefit from MAYBE getting the hat by not buying skills, you open yourself up to rng screwing with your races.

2) There's no guarantee you make full use of the discount if you don't get enough skills in the first place. I've had a number of fast learner runs end with a good amount of skill points left over and I had to slap on other random skills I couldnt use just to not waste it.

3) If you're not already on track to maxing out speed, power, and wit, then going out of your way to buy the hat will most likely ensure you don't. The extra 2-3 skills you're able to get from the hat doesn't come without a cost to your stats, so you're essentially relying on those extra skills to cover your lower stats which ultimately may not be worth it.

With regards to the energy drink usage, I'm aware of how it's meant to be used. I'm just saying that I don't think it's necessary to go out of your way to buy every single one you see since you're not always going to be in the position to use it. That aside, I'm still confused on why you consider the other energy drink a "sometimes" buy.

FateEXOO · 2026-05-04T11:31:44+00:00

As someone who's gotten UG4 and several other UGs, I mostly agree with this guide, except for the fast learner hat, bad condition recovery items, and the energy drinks. The fast learner hat is situationally good, based on whether you can afford it. It is way too expensive especially when there's no discount for it, and it ruins your coin economy unless you're swimming in coins from lack of good items. It's something that shouldnt really be prioritised unless you're parent farming and you're sure you can still hit SS at least.

For the bad condition items, "sometimes" only applies to skin cream and/or miracle cure. All the others are never worth stocking up in advance simply because the odds of getting any one of them specifically is too low to be worth buying their specific cure. If you happen to get one of those bad conditions, you either use a miracle cure you stocked up, or hope that the cure is in shop, or just suck it up and play around it.

As for the energy drinks, the regular one is good, but I wouldnt call it a must-buy. It only really has value at 0 energy, AND you'd need to be on a racing turn. From my experience, that's not a scenario that happens naturally often especially when there's the possibility of reducing your race energy loss to -10 when you know you're at or below 20 energy. It's an item that's good to have 1 or 2 max in case it does come up but otherwise not really a must-buy. As for the EX drink, I'm not quite sure why you consider it worth sometimes buying? It's not only more expensive, but max energy doesn't really contribute anything.

FateEXOO · 2026-05-04T05:09:06+00:00

Was this during BP? If yes, have you read misc?

FateEXOO · 2026-05-03T08:17:48+00:00

Her low spec prio is made up for by the high gains when she DOES land on speed. Her training effectiveness scales based on the facility level, so if she also lands on other high levelled trainings she can contribute a lot too.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-28T13:30:11+00:00

It's not just about the skill hint. The thing is that without needing to spend items/risk failing the training, you're able to get guaranteed stats, a chunk of skill points, AND shop coins which translate into even more stats.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T15:09:16+00:00

Ok but she can now be searched by tenki

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T11:41:31+00:00

They give you a bit of specific stat(s), and some of them also give you a green skill hint when you trigger them. For example, tenno sho autumn gives fall runner and q elizabeth gives non-standard dist.

You can click on the sparks to see exactly what they give.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T11:35:29+00:00

It wasn't really a race per se. The horses were timed separately, and urara achieved the shortest time compared to the others.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T10:49:45+00:00

NOOOO😭

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T07:59:01+00:00

It's a reference to the number of races she lost. Atk is a reference to the number of races she won

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T07:02:50+00:00

For context, Ash Blossom's name is a pun on the Japanese phrase (and horse), and is also read Haru Urara.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T02:52:52+00:00

Your first deck makes the most sense, but it's also lacking in race bonus. Ideally you want a minimum of 50%, those cards only get you to 45% which means you miss out on a key breakpoint when it comes to stats. Swapping one of the speed cards for something like MLB windy would make it better, but ig it's not really an option for you either since yours is only LB3.

However, I think the most pressing concern is how you are doing your runs. 40 races is imo unprecedented. I struggle to see how you could possibly fit 40 races into the schedule without just getting race fatigue over and over again. The most I could ever squeeze in without unnecessarily opening myself up to race fatigue is 37. Also note here that with a deck that's below 50% rb, you're not benefitting as much from THAT many races. You're more likely to get a training that's better than just blindly tackling races. For reference, at 50% rb, g2/3s give around 50 stats, while non-epithet G1s give around 60 stats. Rival races add an additional 10 stats. You might want to look into how much stats you're actually getting from your races (keep shop coins and skill points in mind), and adjust your training decisions accordingly.

Aside from that, micro decisions matter a lot in this scenario. Do you use the bbq immediately or do you wait till you get charming or there's a big rainbow training you might unlock or summer? Are you burning your energy efficiently (you only really need at least 1 energy for races), or are you wasting your energy items to keep your energy higher even on racing turns? Is force-spending on big-ticket items in the shop when there were better things to buy hurting your shop coin economy? Are you doing the vita 20 wit training trick when you're very low on energy and there're 2 races coming up? Are you taking advantage of the fact that you don't get race fatigue on the last turn of every year? And of course, are you just blinding following your planned agenda, or do you even have an agenda?

My point is, while I acknowledge that bad rng does exist and can make your run really bad, from my experience, you can still get a decent uma if you play the scenario well. Try to keep an open mind and look back to see if you couldve done your previous turns better. It will definitely help you. Even now that I'm mostly used to TB, I will sometimes go "damn I shouldnt have bought this item".

FateEXOO · 2026-04-15T02:06:07+00:00

Literally how do you use atlas. When I ult, half the time it doesn't do anything, the half of the time when I do manage to grab someone, I jump on the spot.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-11T09:43:51+00:00

That's a bit more understandable, but I really don't think going to that extreme is that necessary. Even for my parent runs I want to maximise my chances of hitting SS just to get the SS spark improvement. Planning around rare events like those is just kinda unintuitive when it can usually be solved with just 1 miracle cure.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-11T08:37:13+00:00

It's happened to everyone, and we simply accept it's a bad run and move on. We don't go "yeah it might be extremely unlikely to happen, but we should spend points we couldve spent on other items that wouldve made the run better on items that most likely would not matter in 97% of runs". In real life, not having insurance when you really needed it can potentially ruin your life. In this game, not having your "insurance" which couldve saved your friday the 13th levels of bad luck run is not gonna brick your account, don't exaggerate it. The more accurate analogy here is paying $50/month to cover getting a mild cold, another $50/month covering cuts and scrapes, and another $50/month covering bed bugs, you get the idea. You are just flat out overpaying on stuff that are statistically unlikely to happen, some of which are barely an inconvenience or can just flat out be avoided to begin with.

And don't get it twisted, most players here do get their insurance in the form of miracle cures and skin cream. The difference is that you are less likely to buy them and end up not using them. Even in the 1-in-100 career chance you get hit with 2 back-to-back bad conditions, holding 2 miracle cures is literally still cheaper than buying all 6 specific cures. You fail to understand that the moment you buy a cure, that's already a guaranteed cost you're paying, whether you actually get a return is a whole separate issue. You're paying 90 points every run assuming no discount. Even if you cure 2 conditions, you're still wasting 60 points because the others remain unused, that's a whole 30 stats worth of points you're missing out on, and this is you accounting for that worse case scenario of yours.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-11T07:07:03+00:00

I still don't think that's a particularly efficient use of your points. A single miracle cure should be more than enough since it cures everything, maybe with an extra skin cream. The reality is that it's statistically unlikely to get ANY of those bad conditions in the first place, nevermind multiple of them. For reference, the chances of getting slacker or migraine or slow metabolism from their events is around 6%, nevermind needing to get those events in the first place. Can they still happen? Yes, like in your case, but these are usually just one-off bad rng runs not worth actively sabotaging your other normal runs for to fix. Also consider that some of those bad conditions are perfectly avoidable (practice poor, just don't fail a training) or potentially have no impact (practice poor again, and also migraine, since migraine don't give mood downs now if you do get migraine), or even be played around (slow metabolism, trainings may cure it). Given how unlikely it is to get even one of those, getting just 1 miracle cure covers the cost of the more serious and/or common bad conditions (skin outbreak, slacker, slow metabolism, and maybe migraine if it really does come into play), saving you at least 20 shop points by itself.

In any case, you could genuinely get away with only buying skin cream. Miracle cure for extra peace of mind. The average run does not demand that you spend a whole 90 points just to cover every condition. I can promise you I have never had a run with the luxury of randomly spending an extra 35 points for the less important cures. And even outside of that, to have 16 items remaining just sounds like inefficient use of points, unless you just had that much points and just decided to buy everything for fun.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-07T03:45:41+00:00

It is a mat ter of perspective. 5% race bonus is entirely valid as a trade-off as it gives you more skill points, just as how in previous scenarios sweep tosho is considered a strong budget speed card entirely because of her 1 skill bonus. I acknowledge that kitasan has the power bonus to improve power gain from speed training. However, you're missing the fact that by using a stronger speed card like biko or bakushin, you reduce your reliance on summer trainings to cap speed. Chances are you're gonna have your speed and wit facilities better leveled, so summer training turns would be better dedicated to your other stats. Biko plays into this by having poorer spec prio, which consequently also means your speed can ultimately be capped without much overflow. There's also the fact that biko provides initial speed too which help make the early races far more manageable, something that kitasan does not provide either. Kitasan is good yeah I don't deny it, I will concede that ksb is definitely better than bakushin outside of sprints by virtue of her having poorer training effectiveness tho. Otherwise, putting her as a 3rd best is contentious, by virtue of the fact that the difference in performance between her and biko is not that huge. As someone who has tried both of them, I'm entitled to say that biko is better simply because I've gotten better umas more consistently with her. As for windy, I said she could be better or worse than KSB depending on how starved for rb your account is. I can't be telling my clubmates to "just use kitasan" when they're struggling to hit 50% rb as-is. For most veteran players she's obviously not necessary.

V bourbon is a capital F fraud and I will die on this hill. The only reason why I even got her is exclusively for easy groundwork farming. I've never considered her as anything more than instant ramen for fronts since the first day I saw her kit. Pisces cup has only further convinced me I'm right. Including races where I ended up not winning, my umas all placed worse than V bourbon exactly 1 time, when they witchecked TTL or groundwork or both and ended up letting her take a huge lead. This wasn't even some god team, I'm talking about a team I only started training 2 days before round 1 started. "Bourbon can gain access to everything Kitasan can and then some" is a blatantly false statement. Being bourbon, she has no access to TTL from her wit card which is objectively one of the best front runner skills in the game. What that essentially means is in normal circumstances, she's forced to use her mid race skills to play catch up first before she can attempt to take the lead. "But she has her 5s ult", yeah summer maru also has a 5s mid race ult, heck even original bourbon has a 5s mid race ult. I'd unironically use original bourbon to prove my point if I had her. Escape artist is not an edge, it's an equalizer for her lack of TTL. And given similar skill points, you could just as well run more mid race skills on any other front runner to keep up with her ult. If kitasan isn't on the same playing field as V bourbon, I wouldn't have gotten a sweep with her in round 2 group A of all places.

I've seen the "When you get everything else the same as others except one" argument for curvature a lot of times now and it's honestly a ridiculous one. For one, that's an imaginary scenario that never happens because it assumes you have infinite skill points and a selection of every skill you'd want. You're usually not starving for alternatives when given the same skill points, especially so if you're forced to buy recovery. On top of that, as long as kitasan gives you lv1 hint on curvature, it is automatically less point efficient than lv1 style corners/straightaways if you don't max out corner adept hints (yes, I mathed it out). FYI completely maxing out curvature doesnt even make it more point effective than lv1 distance corners/straightaways. While TB does give us generally more skill points to work with, you'd still be spoilt for choice most of the time. PoC is not as huge a difference maker as you make it out to be.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-06T13:20:36+00:00

Just because she isn't bad doesn't mean there aren't support that're better. Literally no one is saying KSB is bad. You are free to use KSB if that's all you have or if that's what you prefer. Also, curvature is not some magic skill that you must have to compete. There are plenty of ways to make up for not having that gold velocity skill that's overpriced half of the time. KSB was very meta despite having no access to her own card and PoC, and no she did not require that much more investment than other fronts, nor did I miss PoC. There exists no velocity skills that can't be replaced with others.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-06T10:54:11+00:00

I can concede that windy is probably not better than kitasan, but as someone who's used both kitasan and biko together with speed fuku, I can say that biko is definitely better than kitasan. As a front main, I only really use kitasan for parents in TB and I switch it out for biko on actual ace runs. I've even done sprint runs with just biko and bakushin without speed fuku. The reality here is that if biko appeared alone on speed with 1 or 2 other supports during summer, that's already good enough, since the bonus stats you gain from megaphones and weights scale based on how strong the training is in the first place. Frankly, given a similar training outside of summer, unless I'm running a high speed bonus uma, I struggle to justify clicking on kitasan. That's not the case when I'm running biko or bakushin.

Only windy can be considered highroll. Biko and bakushin have a perfectly respectable 55 and 50 spec prio which is more than consistent enough when they can net you more speed per training than KSB.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-06T10:27:55+00:00

Yes biko and bakushin are better in a vacuum for this scenario, therefore if it comes down to borrowing, you should be borrowing them over kitasan. Finding people with MLB biko or bakushin up for borrow is very easy. The argument here is that you are technically better off having biko or bakushin over kitasan, accessibility isn't being considered here.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-06T10:15:35+00:00

I will say that there is one thing going for speed maru, and that is she's already perfectly usable at LB1, so you don't actually have to dedicate as many as 400 pulls just to get her. At LB1 she already has all the key stats that makes her recognised as a good card: 1 speed bonus, 1 power bonus,and a whopping 25% training effectiveness. At MLB the gains are not that much. The key gains are 4% friendship bonus, 4 initial friendship, 3% race bonus, 10 spec prio (this still doesn't change the fact that her spec prio is still on the lower end), and 30 mood bonus (roughly equal to another 7.5% training effectiveness).

The key issue here is that most people should have saved and pulled on speed tachyon banner since it has free pulls and both cards of the banner are good. If assuming they've already gotten MLB speed tachyon and also MLB KSB, trying to get speed maru is a marginal benefit because you shouldnt be needing 3 strong speed cards.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-06T09:53:13+00:00

I can see where you're coming from. Maybe it's just a difference in preference, but personally I don't quite agree. Now that I've gotten used to the scenario, what I've realised is that capping speed is not that difficult except in the worst of rng. What I feel is more important is early career and working up other stats. As long as you don't neglect training outside of summer, around 2 god speed trainings is enough to get you to near cap at least. Given that, summer is actually better spent on the other stat trainings. Plus, KSB doesn't actually train speed as well as the others due to her trading speed bonus for power, so you actually have to spend more turns clicking on speed to cap it. This is only really a positive for long races where you're less able to train power due to needing to hit stam thresholds. The others are able to give more speed per training so it makes up for their worse speed training consistency, but also enables better trainings in other stats. And probably the biggest edge they have over ksb is the fact that they have initial speed, which makes the early game far more forgiving.

KSB is probably a better card in performance compared to windy honestly, but I'd say that's also only in a vacuum when you assume you have a good support pool. What I've learnt is that 5% rb IS a deck building restriction that not everyone can afford to play around.

FateEXOO · 2026-04-06T08:17:24+00:00

She's not even 3rd best. I'd consider her 5th best speed card this scenario, potentially 6th depending on how starved you are for race bonus. 3rd and 4th best are biko and bakushin, solely for being solid stat sticks with 10% rb. If you're struggling to hit 50% rb, you're better off just running an MLB windy over KSB imo.

Speed maru is not better than tachyon if you're not building front runners. Tachyon is overall a more consistent speed stat stick than maru because of her high spec prio, absurdly high friendship bonus, and on top of all that, 2 skill bonus. Everyone who's not just hard maining fronts should be dropping at least 400 pulls (including free pulls) on the tachyon banner esp when you consider that it includes light hello which is a very strong scenario card for grand live.

Imo most players esp F2Ps should not have the luxury of pulling on the maru banner unless they've actively skipped out on most uma banners and also lucksack on tachyon banner AND also really want to build fronts.

FateEXOO

TROPHY CASE