News
Sun, Oct 25, 2026
Uma Musume Pretty Derby’s new training scenario “Shundai Festival” received a media-only hands-on ahead of release, and 4Gamer attended the preview session to report what players will actually be doing in the twelve-year festival setting. The scenario sets several Uma Musume as sacred festival horses called “kami-koma” and centers development around five named festival pieces — each tied to a different training stat — plus a new friend-type support, Azuma (voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi). 4Gamer’s session included two full runs of the scenario and a room-match race; Cygames is the publisher behind Uma Musume, and Automaton appeared among the room-match participants in the preview race results included below.
Shundai Festival is a full-distance scenario similar in scope to the previous “Trecen-kan” scenario, and the baseline stat caps are raised compared with that prior mode: Speed cap increases from 2150 to 2200, Stamina from 1800 to 1850, and Power from 1700 to 1800. The scenario keeps the same training length mechanics as Trecen-kan — the育成 period runs until the URA Finals — and each horse is assigned a fixed target race during育成. An end-of-year event called the “Progress Presentation” checks progress against those targets; the outcome is either “Success” or “Great Success,” with Great Success granting stronger bonuses such as Friendship Bonus, Specialty Rate Up, Hint Chance Up, and Race Bonus. 4Gamer noted the scenario was still undergoing balance tweaks at the preview, so some numerical values remain subject to change.
The scenario’s new narrative face is Azuma, the shrine maiden of the Shundai Festival. Azuma appears as the scenario friend-type special support SSR card [Itodome detaki, Matsuri Kana], and her scenario-link effects are tightly integrated with the Shundai mechanics. Azuma’s card also interacts strongly with the scenario’s “outing” (going-out) command, which the preview flagged as a core tactic; her link raises the maximum achievable level for each festival piece and gives a modest bonus that can push piece levels past key thresholds. Kotono Mitsuishi provides Azuma’s voice, and the preview materials confirmed Azuma’s scenario-link benefit that the smallest festival piece level can be increased by +1 during outings. The preview stressed that Azuma’s SSR is effectively required to cap festival piece levels above Lv8 — the point where piece-level gains produce noticeably larger training bonuses — and the scenario-link effects work even on an unbound (non-upgraded) SSR.
Shundai Festival introduces five named “pieces” that anchor育成 choices: Yabusame (Speed), Divine Banner Contest (Stamina), Nōmai (Power), Great Float Pull (Guts), and Hikuga (Wisdom). Each piece has an assigned “piece handler” determined by support card type; for example, Speed-type supports act as handlers for Yabusame. Your deck’s supports plus one non-deck handler per piece take part in practices and contribute to the piece gauge. Practices attended by a handler add +1 to that piece’s gauge, and Friendship Training adds +2. When a piece gauge fills, you can trigger an “piece practice” for the stat tied to that piece; executing a piece practice raises that piece’s Piece Level and resets the gauge. Higher Piece Level increases the potency of future piece practices, so piece Lv progression is a repeatable source of strong stat gains during育成.
Parallel to piece practices is the “Teachings” system: at fixed timing windows players receive a set of buffs called Teachings, which can be assigned to one of the five pieces and later combined to strengthen their effects. The first Teaching transfer occurs on Turn 3 and grants five base Teachings: Bond Teaching, Specialty Rate Teaching, Hint Teaching, Assistance Teaching, and Stamina Teaching. Later transfers occur at the start of Classic and Senior years and offer upgrade Teachings that can be fused with the base Teachings in a one-time “Teaching Transmutation.” The second transfer offers two upgrade Teachings (Specialization Teaching and Diligence Teaching); the third offers three (Cooperation, Tenacity, and Dual-Path Teaching). Each base Teaching can undergo at most one transmutation, and the choice is permanent for that育成 run, so your assignment of which upgrade to fuse with which base Teaching shapes how strong specific piece-focused buffs become. 4Gamer recorded that Teachings are fixed rather than random in the preview builds, which raises the scenario’s reproducibility and learning curve.
Piece Level targets are tied into Progress Presentation outcomes. The scenario sets target Piece Lvs that must be met by the end-of-year check: Junior class requires Lv3, Classic requires Lv5, and Senior requires Lv6 for each piece. If any single piece fails to meet its target, the presentation may return only a Success-level result instead of Great Success, reducing the end-of-year bonuses. The preview also confirmed that piece practice effects differ by class: Junior, Classic, and Senior piece practices yield progressively larger bonuses, and the Senior-level piece practice unlocks an additional buff only if your deck includes five or more distinct support types. The Senior buff is gated by the diversity of your support deck, so a meta that uses only four support types (for example, three Speed + one Stamina) will miss that extra Senior benefit. The preview suggested typical successful decks for the scenario might include Speed x2, Stamina x1, Power x1, Wisdom x1, and a Friend support — a configuration that lets you include the new Power SSR Maya no Top Gun while meeting the five-type requirement.
Maya no Top Gun debuts as a Power-type SSR support card, labeled [Time of Departure], and the preview positioned her as more suitable for mid- to long-distance育成. Her skill pool and support bonuses skew toward those distance bands, and 4Gamer’s playthroughs used her to good effect in longer training builds. The scenario’s piece gauge fills only when the training includes a piece handler in the practice, not simply by doing a stat practice of that type — a Speed practice raises the Yabusame gauge only if a Yabusame handler is present in the session. Non-deck supports still appear as piece handlers and contribute to gauges, which the preview highlighted as a departure from some prior scenarios where off-deck supports had limited impact. That change made some previously-unused off-deck supports suddenly useful because they could act as extra piece handlers and supply additional Teaching buffs.
Shundai Festival also replaces the usual summer camp with the Shundai Festival Camp, which converts all practice choices during camp into piece practices. The preview confirmed the camp occurs three times per育成 run, because Shundai Festival Camp can happen during Junior, Classic, and Senior — unlike prior scenarios where some camps did not occur in Junior. The preview noted that the camp lacks a mid-camp stamina recovery event that appeared in Trecen-kan, so players should avoid entering camp with unnecessarily low stamina. During camp, the opportunity to perform back-to-back piece practices makes camp a large, concentrated window for ramping Piece Lv and meeting Progress Presentation targets.
4Gamer closed the preview with quantitative notes from their two full育成 runs. Baseline stats in the preview runs ended generally higher than the Trecen-kan session; Playtest runs finished around 9,500 Skill Points and required approximately 25–30 minutes for an Auto育成 run. 4Gamer’s impression after two tries was that the scenario felt more accessible — you can still refine and squeeze extra stats by optimizing Teachings and piece practices, but accidental missteps produced fewer catastrophic results than their previous Trecen-kan preview. The preview highlighted a strategic tension: choose which base Teaching to transmute with each upgrade Teaching and where to assign base Teachings among the five pieces; those choices materially affect how each piece grows and how powerful piece practices become.
The preview session ended with an on-site mini-festival and a room-match race using Kyoto 2200m (Elizabeth Queen Cup rules), the same regulations used in the October Champions Meeting. 4Gamer’s entrant, Still in Love, ran a good race with a late acceleration from her unique skill “Scarlet Lily’s Exaltation” but finished second to Almond Eye (the winner ridden by Dengeki Famicon Gamer). Automaton also fielded a Still in Love in the match and finished third. The in-person festival featured a photo spot with Azuma and Daiwa Scarlet panels, traditional festival booths, and small games; 4Gamer’s reporter tried target-throwing, yo-yo fishing, and a candy grab, with mixed luck on the prizes.
Takeaway: Shundai Festival’s two-layer system — Teachings that you assign and fuse, plus repeatable piece practices that scale with Piece Lv — makes the scenario a procedural puzzle where piece assignments and Teaching transmutations determine whether you hit the Progress Presentation Great Success thresholds. Azuma’s SSR friend card and the five-or-more support-type Senior bonus are the clearest mechanical levers for hitting high Piece Lvs, and the preview’s numbers (raised stat caps, ~9,500 skill points, 25–30-minute Auto育成 runs) give a concrete sense of how a typical育成 might play out. Cygames’ implementation puts new decisions in the hands of the player: choose your Teachings carefully, include Azuma if you want Lv8+ piece scaling, and plan camps so you don’t enter them starved for stamina.
