What this is: an Uma Musume-focused sideblog and nothing else. Will likely end up being 95 % reblogs when not liveblogging CM attempts (tagged #[sign] cup + my team members for that day's results)
Why this is: I just like having different side blogs for different things.
Who this is: Trainer ID Card below. (ID: 467 674 851 867)
EDIT: Banner plans below the cut.
Used the carat calculator created by Henry Handsome, Bnhershy and Daptrius to see roughly how many carats I could have over the coming year.
Up to 400 pulls for the Mr. C.B. Support card banner. There may be free pulls during the week, so I will likely wait until the end of the banner. Reasoning: I would like to focus more on End Closers (Or at least characters that could be run that way) in the future.
Air Shakur. Funds might be tight if I need to go to pity twice on CB.
The 100 free pulls on the Agnes Tachyon and Light Hello SSR banner, then 100 if I fail to get Light Hello. (Not even considering Tachyon as I don't plan to play the game for much longer after that.)
Up to 200 pulls for Nakayama Festa.
After that point, I will likely reduce my playing hours drastically. That said, I like twisting characters into End Closers so I might focus on support cards geared toward them going forward.
Disclaimer: I got a single copy of Light Hello and Tachyon SSRs so far, but have been absolutely swimming in Light Hello Rs. Still haven't gotten the hang of it, but using Light Hello R and borrowing Tachyon is giving decent-ish results?
Light Hello may be cute, but I find it hard to care too much about the story of this scenario. Then again I'd always been the type to skip most of the concerts and enjoy only some of the tracks in my own time.
The BGM in this scenario is nicer to listen to on repeat than the Trackblazer tracks, though!
The fact that you can use up the last of your lesson points after the final cutscene is a nice touch. Assuming that you can pick any of the options left, that is.
I see what people mean about the scenario being a bit too heavy on the RNG...
Yay, easy way to get Concentration onto my new Team Trials team as long as you use any of the Bourbon cards!
Unfortunately I have a pretty packed schedule the coming days, so I'll have to hold off on exploring it until things calm down on Saturday/Sunday.
... Ironically, one of the things I'll be doing is going to Närcon on Friday - and if I'm lucky, I might get to witness the first ever Närcon Derby, where people cosplaying as Umas can run in an actual race! The weather's not been great recently, but let's hope that conditions improve.
Unfortunately I have a pretty packed schedule the coming days, so I'll have to hold off on exploring it until things calm down on Saturday/Sunday.
... Ironically, one of the things I'll be doing is going to Närcon on Friday - and if I'm lucky, I might get to witness the first ever Närcon Derby, where people cosplaying as Umas can run in an actual race! The weather's not been great recently, but let's hope that conditions improve.
Leo Cup finals results are here! (Don't worry, I listened to Ms. Victoria after ending the recording.)
someone else bringing two Runaways was a threat I didn't consider for Suzuka... A very long time ago I did experiment with giving some fronts both Angling and Shooting for Victory, so I suppose it's time to look into creating a specialised Front Taiki parent.
Anyhow, it was a pleasant surprise to manage a dead heat here, especially considering how far back Fuji started! She got a pretty noticable spot in the winning photo too, lol
The next CM will be on Dirt again! Inari One has an obvious spot on the team, and I might bring base Oguri (haven't decided which position, though). Not trying to get Super Creek since she has no dirt affinity whatsoever, but it could be fun to bring another oddball pick with E in Dirt...
Decided to watch any matches won today (and some of the losses) to see if my hypothesis from yesterday was correct.
Attempt 1: Both of the times that Fuji won, there were fronts in the race that she could surpass at the end. Also took a look at the first race; she managed to get "lucky" pace and thus got outsped at the end.
Attempt 2: Two wins again. First one: All of my runners managed to get a late start, but Kiseki somehow recovered from like 7th, then hung around in 3rd spot behind two fronts until late-game. Second one: Someone brought a lonely Bourbon, and Kiseki kept trading 2nd and 3rd place with Taiki and someone else's Bakushin before surging off.
Attempt 3: Just one win, again in a lobby with two fronts. Kiseki outsped the other paces and hung around in 3rd place, though.
Attempt 4: Watched both the fourth and fifth races. In the fourth, Kiseki once again got a late start and then snuck up on the others to reach a good position. The final race started with Special coming out into 2nd place behind Bourbon and my other two getting stuck in 9th and 8th place... Spe fell into 4th place once Curren Chan started advancing and managed to pop off both Budding and Shooting, but by then Bourbon had built a big enough lead that this didn't matter.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the runners with the highest win rate after the 4th day are Kiseki, Suzuka and Bakushin:
I'm honestly tempted to bring these three to the finals. Either someone else brings a front and Suzuka gets a slim fighting chance against them, or she will ensure that the others don't end up in a lucky pace position. Thoughts?
So, the team I'm bringing today is an all-pace team: Bakushin, Fuji Kiseki, and... an oddball pick: Nakayama's very own Commander Special Week!
For Special, I decided to borrow a Summer Golshi parent with a Nishino grandparent partially for their higher base compability and partially so she could use Overwhelming Pressure in this race. It took a few tries, but in this run I got lucky enough to trigger both Sprint A and a hint for Budding Blossom... Then unlucky enough to not get a single hint for Ignited Spirit PWR the whole time. So at the end I went "OK, I'll just take IS Guts and Plan X to compensate for the loss of accel" - and only after ending did I realise that 564 could get her to activate Plan X too early, and then Pressure wouldn't trigger at all. Sigh.
Anyway, the results are...
Surprisingly good!
Of course the RNG helps, but I wonder if I'd accidentally manipulated the odds in my favour by having slightly lower accel than the competition? After all, if it's a pace-heavy lobby and the others surge ahead right at the start, that gives my runners a better chance to sneak up on them and get into 3rd or 4th position at the right moment. Normally I just pressed View Results aside from the last run of the day, but tomorrow I might make an effort to check out the races and see if that theory tracks.
Pictured: Bourbon trying to carry Suzuka through this leg of the CM
Attempt 1: A pretty sobering start, even if Suzuka did manage a win.
Attempt 2: Bakushin coming in clutch at the end there.
Attempt 3: Ouch.
Attempt 4: A very strong ending!
Favourite win photos:
This means that we're going into Group A with a combined win rate of 40%. As I said I'd like to bring some paces as well, but if that combo fails I might return to the Suzuka + supportive front + whichever pace worked the best? We'll see.
Tried to train a bunch of different fronts and paces this time. The plan is to bring two fronts to round 1, then if I actually manage to get into Group A* I might switch to 3 paces in the hopes that one of them will steal 4th place from more competently built ones and win thanks to the jank RNG in Sprints. (*This is an experiment: next CM I'll go back to strategically retiring to guarantee Group B.)
Anyhow, let's start with Suzuka, Bourbon, and the obligatory pace Bakushin!
Attempt 1: Kept barely losing to the competition... Until Bourbon managed to win a dead heat against King Halo in the very last race?!
Attempt 2: Suzuka got us into Group A!! It was pretty satisfying to see Taiki sneaking up on her and Suzuka activating straightaway skills to keep the lead in that fourth race.
Attempt 3: Bakushin managed to snag a win! (Also: neither of the Rudolfs were Dominator-with-Golshi-Ult-spammers - they were both genuine aces. Nice!)
Attempt 4: We end the day with a few more wins, including our first and probably only 1-2-3 finish in the last race!
Cleaning out some old stuff on my computer. For instance, back in 2022 I was watching Chargeman Ken on YouTube and someone came with an insightful comment, which I apparently decided to screenshot for future reference*:
Only 4 years later do I realise that their avatar art was Curren Chan doing this fucking face
Been too busy to go back to URA to really appreciate the new Happy Meek content, but did some quick runs with updated Unity. Managed to get a parent Ryan's power to exactly 1201 without really trying...
That said, I forgot how much I hate doing parent runs with her when you can't use alarm clocks to fix 2nd or 3rd places in the long races ;_;
Recorded this on a different computer than before. Not sure if the quality difference is noticable.
Genuinely a little surprised that my Bourbon managed to defeat her clone with superior stats and skills. Guess that's the power of having S in both surface and distance, as well as getting Fast Learner. Genuinely what are the odds of that
With that said, Leo cup will be another sprint. While I'm well aware that my runners' stats won't be up to par with the competition, I'm genuinely tempted to join Group A next time just to see if the RNG can bless me with some upsets. Maybe with a team of three lates and/or one end to ensure that at least one of them gets 6th place for Ryan's ult in those pace- and front-heavy lobbies? (I've also seen a truly devious comment from someone on Reddit saying that they'd like to use Summer Golshi as a parent just so they can proc Dominator in the sprint CM. I refuse to bring triple dominators, but I wonder if I could bring at least one...)
Attempt 1-2: Went pretty well, although funnily enough we managed to get beat by a Pace Special Week with medium A and no gold skills aside from Gourmand. Shouldn't underestimate what nearly 1200 power and an ult with both velocity and accel does to a runner, I guess.
Attempt 3: Things have taken a turn...
Attempt 4: But we managed to take it back. (The loss against Maruzensky was a dead heat, at least)
Also, I forgot to include winner photos for the last two days... It's always the same two runners, but might as well show my two favourites.
Same team as yesterday but with a new and improved Grass Wonder. Let's go!
Attempt 1: A strong start!
Attempt 2: Can't remember the last time I won all 5 races in an attempt. Feels nice!
Attempt 3: Several of these featured Bourbon having to activate Nimble Navigator to steal the first place from another Front and then taking Angling and Scheming. I originally only took NN because I had skill points left over, glad to see that it's being effective.
Attempt 4: Holy shit
All in all, Bourbon's at a combined 35,1% win rate, while this Grass shot ahead to a 55% win rate. Knowing my luck something will go wrong in the finals, but at least we're likely to get a lot of carats from the races tomorrow...?
