Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash – Support Card Evaluation Guide

Ultimate Guide to Support Card Evaluation

By Celery.

Notes / FAQ 

• There is no “one true way” to judge the strength of support cards. These evaluations will use a collection of parameters (stat weights etc.) that are judged by me to be fairly reasonable to rank the cards in question based on general usefulness for attaining desirable stats for PvP.
• Overall, a card’s strength is mainly composed of 1) its power to raise its main stats through friendship bonus, +stat boosts, specialty rate, and initial bond. 2) cross-training, meaning how much it benefits other trainings where it shows up, the main components being training bonus and motivation bonus. Race bonus and event stats are also big contributors to how much other stats are raised by a card.
• Group/Friend cards are hard to compare with other cards and often involve complicated mechanics tied to different scenarios so you won’t find their evaluation here. Typically a scenario linked group/friend card is a must-use card in their respective scenario anyways, leaving no place for other group/friend cards in the deck. Friend-like cards such as Fuku Speed SSR are hard to compare well to other cards too, so you won’t find them in the main evaluation images.
• When picking cards for a deck, cards within 20-40 score should probably be considered practically equal and your choice should be based on the skills they give, as skills are more important for PvP anyways. Note also that you can “gain” skill points from hint discounts of skills you would buy anyway, making cards like Ramonu int SSR much better in reality.
• Race bonus breakpoints are not evaluated here because the effect of hitting important race bonus thresholds such as 34%RB is so big that it would skew the ranking. For example, if you are debating between a card that gives 5% RB and one that gives 10% RB, but the 10% RB card gets you over the 34% breakpoint, you should add around 25 score to that card compared to its ranking here.
• If a card is not found in the ranking, it’s probably due to me forgetting or it being too hard to evaluate due to a complicated unique or something. Feel free to ask me about missing cards.

How Does the Tool Work

It evaluates cards based on the average amount of stats they give when weighed against every possible combination of trainings they may land on (the weights are based on the probability of each such combination occurring). For example:

One situation could be that a speed card is rainbowing on speed, one card is absent, and four others are in wisdom. In this case, it is most likely that the “best training” would be wisdom and once the tool decides this (based on stat weights) the result of the wisdom training is multiplied by the probability of this particular situation occurring and after summing over this result over all situations, the number is multiplied by the number of turns (in fact, I simulate 6 different “phases” of training ranging from early bonding phase to late game, so this would be the number of turns in that phase). The results of other trainings are discarded since they were not chosen to be the best one.

Energy/fail rate is not simulated per se, but a certain amount of turns are reserved for resting/dating/objectives. Total energy gain from training and events is added up and affects score.

Scenario mechanics are also simulated to a reasonable extent. Stats from races and events also contribute to the total score. Initial bond affects the probability to rainbow in phases 2-3 somewhat. Race bonus gains have no rounding to avoid unwanted effects from race bonus breakpoints (in reality, breakpoints like 34%RB can be significant and may affect deck choice).

When comparing cards to each other, they are simulated with 5 other cards that are kept constant. These cards are picked to be fairly reasonable choices based on meta decks and I split the evaluation into strong/weak cards. Strong cards are simulated together with other 5 strong cards and weak cards with other 5 weak cards to keep things a bit more fair.

After looking at some results, I’d say the bonuses on cards that provide the highest increase for stats are (normalized to quantities what the game considers ”equal”):

1. Flat stat bonuses (especially speed bonus on speed cards). Speed bonus is very good since it works on 3 training categories. SP bonus is also great, and offset bonuses are decent.
2. Training bonus
3. Friendship bonus
4. Specialty rate (the initial ~35 specialty rate matters a good amount, but higher amounts than 50 or so quickly become less important)
5. Motivation bonus
6. Race bonus (L’Arc gives less stats from races)
7. Other bonuses like initial stats up etc.

Speed Cards

Notes: For Palmer I assumed you buy 3 recoveries somewhat early to activate her unique bonus, but this is often not realistic as for shorter distances you don’t always even want to buy recoveries and some umas/decks have trouble getting hints for recoveries anyway. With no recoveries she’d be around Pasa SR level. She is also very much focused on speed which is not ideal in practice. 

Bakushin and Pocket are also heavier on the speed gain due to their +3 speed bonus. 

For Pearl I assumed you get +4 max energy twice early, she can be better if your deck has more +max energy cards though.

Sweep SSR could be added here but you probably don’t want to use it due to being a 0 bond card and having high RNG events.

• For the rest of the speed cards, see the spreadsheet.

In-depth details for the top speed cards:

Still in Love: A well-rounded speed card which gives a strong mid distance gold skill, or a good but slightly unreliable gold skill for betweeners/chasers. Her bonuses are very skill point gain focused, which is ideal for making strong builds for all PvP.

Smart Falcon: Very strong runner-speciality card. Gives an opening leg accel gold for runners and a lot of good runner skills.

Vivlos: Stacked bonuses all around with the kind of 2024-style powercreep the devs have been adding to cards recently. This card is a very universally useful speed card due to giving a gold version of the speed skill Hold Your Tail High, but her main benefit is in the high stat gains.

El Condor Pasa: Very loaded bonuses overall and her unique gives +1 all stat bonus at 100 bond. Slightly lower race bonu, but a total of +2 SP bonus from this card means she is good for skill point gains. Good skills due to her universal gold skill Arcline Professor. Also has a leader/betweener accel gold for a few tracks.

Jungle Pocket: Provides very high bonuses all over, there’s not really anything this card is missing in particular. With 10 race bonus and 1 SP bonus, this card has amazing SP gain which is great for PvP. Unique gives +3 speed bonus at max bond which makes it quite easy to cap speed. Mid/long/backline skills.

Duramente: Incredibly high specialty rate at 120 and very good cross-training bonuses as well. Slightly lacking in the speed bonus/SP bonus department but her insane chain events make up for it easily. Also gives the gold skill Never Give Up which is an amazing general-use gold skill for every strategy and distance.

Sakura Bakushin O: Short distance specialist card. Great for getting high speed with her (up to) +3 speed bonus, but lacks a bit of cross-training bonuses compared to Maruzensky below her. Borrow her when you can afford to in your short distance runs.

Maruzensky: Highest cross-training bonuses for speed cards in the entire game with her unique that gives 5% training bonus per level of training. Amazing card for highrolling good stats and a staple in all runner decks due to its strong runner hints and very strong gold skill Top Runner.

Mejiro Dober: Mile backline card. She’s not particularly amazing for stats, but she is very frontloaded so she’s quite usable for beginners. Not really a notable pick otherwise.

Mejiro Palmer: Very strong card for raising speed IF you can activate her unique bonus of buying 3 recoveries. As mentioned before, this is not usually possible so this card is overrated a lot here. But if you are able to buy 3 recoveries early and it doesn’t screw up your build, the high specialty rate gives very high speed gains overall. Also has 10 race bonus and 1 SP bonus, but no power bonus. Good long/runner skills.

Marvelous Sunday: Just very high bonuses all around, coming with 15% training bonus at max bond as well as +1 Speed/Power/SP bonus. In all regards very similar to Kitasan Black but she’s got +1 Speed/SP bonus over Kitasan at the cost of lower specialty rate. One of the fewer speed cards giving a gold recovery, but overall too niche in terms of skills to see much use.

Eishin Flash: Apart from the lack of race bonus, this card comes with great stats especially with its +2 speed/power bonus and +1 SP bonus (out of these, +1 pow/+1 SP come at 80 bond from her unique). The lack of race bonus is not much of an issue in L’Arc. Comes with decent betweener skills but nothing too crazy enough to be sad about missing in most builds.

Kitasan Black: Though lower ranked here, this used to be a staple in all decks due to its super consistent rainbows and universal skills such as the gold skill Arcline Professor. Still a great card for newer players.

Taiki Shuttle: Just another solid card with almost every relevant bonus, such as 2 speed bonus, 1 power bonus, +1 SP bonus, 10% training bonus and 5% race bonus. The bonuses aren’t quite big enough to bring her up higher in the ranking, but the fact that she gives strong skills for mile (Ruler of Mile as the gold skill) means that she finds a place in many mile frontliner builds.

Honorable Mentions:

• Tosen Jordan (SR): Very good SR card.
• Agnes Tachyon: Used in leader builds.
• El Condor Pasa (SR): Strong card with +1 spd/pow bonus. Shinko Windy and Sweep Tosho are fine alternatives as well.

Stamina Cards (UAF)

Notes: Stamina card ranking is a bit weird because stamina training is not a category you click very often during a run. Most of their stats come from being present in other categories, which is why high cross-training bonuses are very important for stamina cards, more important than friendship/specialty rate. The statweights were adjusted to try to emphasize stamina/guts gain here, but the issue is still present.

Mayano has 0 starting bond so might be a bit lower in reality. Palmer was assumed to have 15% training bonus. For Laurel, I assumed you buy 3 recoveries fairly early (year 1-2) even though this is not usually realistic. Ikuno has 0 specialty rate but edges out with higher bonuses elsewhere especially with her high cross-training and race bonuses. In practice she might be annoying to use due to the inconsistency though, so unless highrolling I recommend creek/dia/cafe instead. Tamamo is quite similar but with slightly lower stats.

• For the rest of the stamina cards, see the spreadsheet.

In-depth details for the top stamina cards:

Sounds of Earth: All around the best stamina card at the moment. Good cross training, good stamina gain, and very high SP gain. Gives a gold recovery skill or a gold speed skill as the choices.

Tanino Gimlet: Very high cross-training bonuses and especially good for guts training. This card is particularly specialized towards mid distance training as it lacks stamina bonus and has low friendship bonus. Gives some nice mid distance skills and a gold skill for mid backliners.

Dantsu Flame: Basically the frontline version of Gimlet SSR. Mid distance oriented and gives a strong gold skill for mid frontliners.

Hokko Tarumae: Good stats all around and great skills for dirt races. Can find a spot in most mid dirt builds, but otherwise no need to bring this card.

Ikuno Dictus: Gets ranked very high due to its amazing cross-training (unique gives up to 20% training bonus) and race bonus. Not very consistent though as it lacks specialty rate, and the gold skill is a betweener skill that is very strong but drains a bunch of stamina, so it has limited uses. Great for getting lucky highrolls though, which is often ideal for PvP builds.

Super Creek: One of the older cards that are still great to this day. Just great bonuses all around with 15% training bonus and 10% race bonus as well. Gives the gold recovery Arc Maestro which works universally, making her a fine option when you really need to survive a high stamina requirement.

Satono Diamond: Fairly similar to Creek but gives higher gains in guts. The recovery skill it gives isn’t as consistent, so this doesn’t see too much use.

Honorable Mentions:

• Mejiro Mcqueen: Lower than Creek in ranking, but her skills are much better for long distance races. If you can stand the loss in stats, this gives higher potential in long PvP.
• Mejiro Palmer: One of the only cards that give the runner opening leg accel gold, making her useful in specific runner builds for umas that lack this as an innate skill.
• Symboli Kris S: Gives a long distance accel gold for betweeners, which is a requirement to make a strong betweener build in long distance. Mostly replaced by Manhattan Cafe int.
• Special Week: Gives Nonstop Girl as a gold skill, this is a very strong accel skill for most mid/long tracks for non-runners.
• Yaeno Muteki (SR): Very strong stamina SR card.
• Mayano Top Gun (SR): Starts at 0 bond, but her high bonuses overall make her a decent choice for highrolling.

Power Cards

Power card ranking is a bit weird because power as a category kind of sucks for getting high scores, you’re more inclined to click on it during training just out of necessity since power is a very good stat. Take the following ranking with a grain of salt.

Agnes Digital’s (SSR) unique bonus requires 5 cards of different categories, which is not actually true for the simulation but I assumed it to hold to be more fair to the card. Probably don’t use this card if you can’t fulfill that condition. For Biko I assumed +4 max energy twice early, but she could be higher if your deck has more +max energy cards. Agnes Digital (SR) has no specialty rate, which is good or bad depending on how you see it.

Note also that the stamina weight here is 1.2, which is probably not ideal for short/mile races where stamina matters less. If you don’t care about stamina, the cards with stamina bonus (like Acute who has +2) would drop quite a bit. Haru Urara is not added anywhere due to its unique being annoying to add, but this card is worthless anyways.

• For the rest of the power cards, see the spreadsheet.

In-depth details for the top power cards:

Nishino Flower: Mostly a generic-use power card with very strong stats. She is the first card who can gain up to 30% training bonus in total. Gives a choice of a short/mile gold skill and a generic midleg gold skill for frontliners.

Seiun Sky: Mid distance runner specialist power card. Quite high stat gain overall, notably with +2 stamina bonus, but she’s very limited in her use cases and isn’t suited as a general-use power card. Close to Nishino Flower in evaluation but much lower in practice since stamina is less important when you’re usually bringing power cards.

KS Miracle: Very balanced stats overall, and specializes as a short-distance power card.

Winning Ticket: Amazing power card for betweeners, and doesn’t need much limit breaks if you care purely about stats. The gold skill is a good final leg betweener skill. 

Tsurumaru Tsuyoshi: Pretty good card in terms of overall stat gain and for gaining high power with its +2 power bonus. However, the skills on this card aren’t really amazing enough where you’d be happy about including it in a meta where power cards aren’t doing so hot.

Wonder Acute: Dirt race specialist power card, but not as strong for shorter distances due to her +2 stamina bonus.

Vodka: Bonuses are strictly optimized towards gaining high power stat and lot’s of power rainbows. This is very good when we rank cards based on power gain, but keep in mind that power cards are not really in the meta right now anyways. Also gives a universal gold recovery skill, making her a possible option for longer distance builds.

El Condor Pasa: An older card that has stood the test of time with its high bonuses, especially the 10% race bonus. Gives the gold skill Killer Tune, which is a great mid distance skill for runner/leader. Can’t be used together with speed Pasa though, so it’s a bit sad.

Hishi Amazon: Strong in terms of cross-training but not as good at raising power itself. Her main use case is to get the gold version of straight shot for chasers that don’t have it built in, and she does it pretty well with maximum discounts on a few good chaser skill hints.

Mayano Top Gun: Similar bonuses to Pasa, but not as high race bonus though she does give SP bonus instead. Just a solid card and gives the gold skill Nonstop Girl which makes her a consideration for some mid/long builds.

Admire Vega: Great cross-training bonus at 20% training bonus and comes with 10% race bonus as well. Gives the amazing chaser gold skill Daring Attack.

Honorable Mentions:

• Daiichi Ruby: Weak card with an amazing short/mile gold skill for backliners.

Guts Cards

Notes: Urara should be fairly higher in reality in terms of pure stat gain, because UAF’s yellow heat-up mechanic favors her quite a lot. She gives +16 stats total for every yellow heat-up on her, so I’d imagine she could be 50-70 score higher here easily if I coded that in.

Ikuno’s score is padded a little bit from her insane chain events that give a bunch of stats. However, a lot of it is stamina so if you don’t care about stamina (short/mile) you should drop her score by 60.

Tannhauser story welfare is also a very strong guts card which has a big 55 initial guts bonus. She isn’t quite as strong as Urara training-wise but has the same issue of starting at 0 bond. Because Urara is so much better I don’t recommend putting both of these cards in your deck since playing with two cards that start at 0 bond can be torture. Hence I don’t rank her in this picture.

• For the rest of the guts cards, see the spreadsheet.

In-depth details for the top guts cards:

Fine Motion: Really good stats overall, basically the 2024 version of Urara guts. However, this card has a big issue in the fact that the gold skill is only useful for mid distance frontlines, and basically only really viable in exactly 2000m races. Since this card is so niche, most of the time you’d rather use another guts card unless you’re just training to pad score.

Orfevre: Very strong compared to previously released guts cards, with a unique effect of gaining +1 stat bonus at 80 bond for every type of card in your deck, so in a 2 speed/2 guts/1 int/1 friend deck that would be +2 speed +2 guts +1 int + 1 skill points. Gives a really good general-use gold skill, Divine Speed, and overall very usable anywhere you’d need a guts card.

Fuji Kiseki: Leader specialist guts card. If you’re trying to fit in a second guts card in your leader decks and aren’t hard-pressed to any option in particular, this card is always good.

Haru Urara: Love it or hate it, this welfare card has absolutely stacked bonuses across the board except for its lack of initial bond. With amazing cross-training, 10 race bonus, and high friendship bonus, she is great for highrolling big stats. Also has +1 SP bonus. But the lack of good skills and her low initial bond make her occasionally grief your training completely due to not bonding up. Still, the best welfare card ever printed.

King Halo: Great card for training short distance backliners due to the gold skills it gives. This card is fairly highly rated here since it has pretty good total stat gain, but a lot of it is focused on speed since this card has up to +3 speed bonus. It’s also decent at raising guts with +2 guts bonus, but perhaps a bit lacking in offstat gains.

Tap Dance City: A premium guts card for runner training. Lacks hint bonuses, but quite potent at getting high stats otherwise. Unique bonus gains training bonus per speed skill bought, up to 3 skills total. Both Runaway and Escape Artist are available from this card as gold skills, and are good skills for runners.

Gold City: A really strong card for raising guts in particular with her +3 guts bonus at max bond. Her high starting bond helps a lot with this, and +1 power bonus is also very desirable for a guts card. Not as high cross-training and race bonus. Gives really good mile skills and a choice between a summer speed green gold and a very good mile accel gold skill mainly for frontliners.

Symboli Rudolf: Just a card with really solid bonuses all around, especially 2 speed, 1 power, and 2 guts bonus. Gives Arc Maestro as a universal gold recovery skill, which means that she is more suited towards mid distance builds and therefore less commonly used.

Ikuno Dictus: Notable for her 15% race bonus and very strong events. Gives a lot of stamina, so don’t overrate this card due to its high placement since stamina is often not as important in short/mile where guts cards see more play. Gold skill is useless too outside of stadium PvP.

KS Miracle: A staple in short/mile leader builds, her +2 power bonus and overall good stats also get her high up in this evaluation. The leader accel gold she gives is almost a necessity in leader builds for shorter distances.

Honorable Mentions:

• Ines Fujin: An older card that is still very good. Consistent guts rainbows and good cross-training, but quite outdated events. Hints are good all around, and the gold is a good recovery skill for runners that works on most tracks.
• Winning Ticket: Not very strong for raising stats, but gives the betweener accel skill Switch-Up Pro which is great for short/mile builds. Quite usable at lower LB’s already.
• Admire Vega: Ranked as the highest SR here due to the 15% race bonus it has got being very strong, but honestly the other SR cards seen above are pretty good too. Judge by what your deck needs the most if you end up choosing between them.

Wisdom Cards

Notes: Ramonu is going to be much higher in practice for mile/mid races, since her hints are going to be giving large amounts of net SP gain. The cards in the clump between Ramonu and Sirius are fairly similar in total strength and are mainly picked based on their skills instead of the quite similar stat gains. TMO/Fine/Bourbon edge out perhaps a bit surprisingly here, but the reason is simply that they have very similar stats than the other cards but also come with initial stat up bonuses which are often forgotten but surprisingly end up mattering in this kind of ranking.

Dober SR has very good training bonuses but no specialty rate, which means that a lot of her score here comes from other stats. She is probably not an ideal choice unless your other int card(s) are strong enough to make up for the difference in lost int. Nakayama Festa SSR has the same issue and is not ranked here because she’s too much of an oddball with her insane cross-training and race bonus. In pure stats the tool would rank her around the top cards, but she’d be gaining around 200 less int which obviously isn’t ideal for ranking an int card. The card is strong for sure, but it requires gambling to attain the type of scoreline (with 1200+ int) that top end builds strive for.

• For the rest of the wisdom cards, see the spreadsheet.

In-depth details for the top wisdom cards:

Mejiro Mcqueen: Just an amazing card for pure int training with up to +3 int bonus, 80 specialty, decent cross-training and +1 speed/SP bonus as well. Can’t really go wrong with this card in terms of stats but the skills are leader only. They are very good leader skills though, especially the gold skill which is midleg speed.

Copano Rickey: Dirt specialist card which has a lot of dirt-only skills that are unobtainable anywhere else. Her two gold skills are frontline-oriented, coming with either a speed skill or a gold heal.

Narita Taishin: Chaser specialist card with very good cross-training bonuses and great SP gain. Meta for all chaser builds for all distances, but not really worth using otherwise.

Taiki Shuttle: Default option for mile frontline builds, since her gold is a very strong option for those. Bit stacked on speed bonus, so not as easy to raise int as the top cards.

Neo Universe: Bit of a forgettable card since her gold skill is a mid random accel which is quite bad. Decent for parenting.

Manhattan Cafe: Comes with all-around premium bonuses like 15% training bonus, 40% motivation bonus, and 10% race bonus in addition to +2 int and +1 SP at 100 bond. Strongest cross-training bonuses out of any int card at the moment. Skills are mainly for long distance and especially a crucial card for all long distance betweeners.

Mejiro Ramonu: Very strong bonuses all around, especially the 35% friendship bonus and +2 int bonus mean that her int rainbows are very fat. Her unique bonus gives 4% training bonus for every speed skill obtained (uniques that give speed count as one too), up to 20% training bonus. She also gives maximum discounted hints for some very strong mile/mid skills, which means that in practice she is even more highly rated than just this purely stat-based evaluation. Gold skill is a strong mile/mid skill. Might not be number one in this ranking, but still the best int card to own due to her universality in mile/mid.

Mihono Bourbon: Very high bonuses across the board except for the lack of race bonus which is not a big issue in L’Arc. Her unique gives +60 initial stats total distributed based on the categories of the cards in your deck. This somewhat makes up for a lack of race bonus, but since she does not have an SP bonus either this means that her SP gain is limited. Gives good skills for runners though, gold being the gold version of the opening leg accel Groundwork.

Nakayama Festa: Very focused on int training with her 80 specialty, but also reasonably decent cross training bonuses. Lacks race bonus but makes up for it with her frequent int rainbows and strong events. Gives the gold version of right turns green, solid skill for all right turns tracks.

TM Opera O: Quite similar bonuses to Ramonu, but has +2 speed bonus instead of SP bonus and increased friendship bonus. Very good for raising speed and cross-training. Great hints for long distance, and the gold skill Monster is a meta-defining skill for long distance leader builds. Also gives an option to choose a generic straight speed gold instead.

Satono Diamond: Very solid and balanced statline. Gives good skill choices for betweeners but she doesn’t otherwise stick out in particular.

Aston Machan: Her 65 specialty is quite high for a wisdom card, and her unique bonus gives +60% motivation bonus when she lands on a rainbow training, which together with her 15% training bonus makes her very potent in showing up in other trainings as well. Gives great skills for short distance, and the gold skill Concentration is a staple in many runner builds, sometimes leader as well.

Fine Motion: Used to be the go-to wisdom card in the early days of the game, but has fallen out of builds due to powercreep especially in gold skill strength. The leader skill she gives isn’t too amazing.

Nice Nature: An older card, but still has some solid bonuses especially as the only card here with 15% race bonus. Gives the betweener accel Switch-Up Pro as a gold skill which is a very strong option in short/mile builds.

Mr. CB: An old staple in chaser builds due to the very strong chaser gold skill Daring Attack it gives. Notorious for being decent at 1LB already.

Non-MLB Cards

Consult the Card Score Spreadsheet for checking out how cards compare at different limit breaks. If you want to apply filters atm you’ll have to make a copy of the sheet.

These simulations use the same parameters as the simulations for each card type from before. Please keep in mind the same special notes as before as well, such as:

• Palmer speed/Laurel stam/Digital SSR pow/… <- cards like this have weird uniques which I evaluate very generously, but if you actually want to use them in a deck it is quite situational whether they’re good or not. If you can’t activate the unique, probably not.
• Some cards have 0 bond or 0 specialty, and the scoring given by the tool may not perfectly represent your idea of how strong they really are. It’s a challenge to evaluate such cards: Is a speed card that sucks at raising speed a good speed card if it’s good at raising other stats instead? Is a card that sometimes costs you a run due to low bond still a good card? The answers will depend on the person.
• Note also that the free welfare cards are only evaluated from 2LB to MLB, since their unique bonus activates at 2LB for some reason instead of 0LB like other cards. Basically, don’t use welfare cards at 0LB/1LB since they’ll be much worse.

Friend / Group Cards

Although there are many friend cards and group cards in the game, there is usually no need to compare them with each other.

Most of the time, running two friend/group cards together is not viable. However, most of the recent scenarios have a specialty friend/group card which synergizes especially well with the scenario mechanics:

Scenario	Specialty Card	Necessity
URA	–	–
Aoharu	Kashimoto Riko	Not required
Grand Live	Light Hello	Necessary
Grand Masters	3 Goddesses	Necessary
Project L’Arc	Satake Mei	Necessary
U.A.F. Ready Go!	Tsurugi Ryoka	Necessary
Great Food Festival	Akikawa Yayoi	Necessary

These scenario-specific cards are pretty much must-includes in their respective scenario and therefore leave no room for other friend/group cards.

TLDR: Use a scenario-specific friend/group card if there exists one, don’t use the other friend/group cards unless you have a very good reason to do so.

Recommendations

Rerolling for Cards

For new players who just started playing, it is recommended to spend your initial jewels to reroll for certain cards. This means creating accounts (on the mobile client/emulator) until you get one that has a desired set of cards. Not having decent support cards to begin with can make your life a pain in the first month or so (later, too!), and no event in the game offers better rewards per time invested than what rerolling has the potential to offer since it is quite fast.

Cards get stronger as you get more copies (up to 5 copies total including the first one), as these allow you to limit break them. Generally, max limit broken (MLB) cards of SR quality are better than SSR cards without limit breaks. But the strongest cards in the game are SSR cards, and some of them are already good at low limit breaks (this is more of an exception than a rule).

It is generally recommended to try to get some strong speed cards or wisdom cards to start off with, as these are used in almost all builds unlike other card types. Here I’ve compiled a collection of speed/wisdom SSR cards that are good targets for rerolling since they are already very strong at 0-1 limit breaks:

Ideally, you aim for 1 speed card from here and hopefully you can either get 1) another card from this list or 2) some decent SR speed cards as well. A start with some decent speed SR cards + some other good SSR card or two can be very good as well. Getting multiple copies of a single card from here is very good, but rare. There are also some other cards which are decent at 1+ copies, consult the lists in the previous section for details.

Note that it is much better to reroll when a strong card is featured in the current banner, even more so during free roll periods (so you can roll more at once). Usually, free rolls are during: Anniversary (end of February), Half-anniversary (end of August), New Years (beginning of January).

Getting a card that is not featured is quite rare, and for the featured cards you have a good chance of obtaining multiple copies of them if you try enough. If the featured card is good and you’ve decided to invest in it, you should be able to get enough gems from just playing the game for a few days to spark the banner (200 rolls for +1 free featured card) after the initial reroll to get even more copies, ideally to MLB.

SSR Pick Ticket Usage

Sometimes a mission or shop will have a SSR pick ticket you can use to choose one SSR card from a pool of past SSR cards to add into your collection. For these tickets, the general rules are that:

• You should use it to try to get a meta card to high LB’s. As you can see from the above evaluations, 0LB-1LB SSR cards are rarely much stronger than SR’s. But if you stack enough tickets or already have a good SSR at 2LB/3LB, you can use the ticket to obtain a top tier card at MLB. This is the best idea 90% of the time.
• Use the above ranking to roughly judge how strong a card is. Remember that cards which are only 20-30 score apart aren’t that much different from each other, so you’ll want to pick cards not only based on stats but also their skills (very important). Meta cards are usually meta because they give both good stats and skills.
• Pick a card that fills out your current roster. If you’re lacking good cards the order of operations should generally be Speed -> Wisdom -> Stam/Guts in terms of which cards to invest in first. So if your speed cards are good, start looking at wisdom cards etc.
• If it’s during a major patch like the release of a new scenario, wait for the meta to settle before making any hasty decisions.
• Remember, you can always save the ticket for later. They don’t expire.

Welfare Card Choice Item

This section is about cards you can pick for free from the welfare card selector:

• (This item is obtained from monthly story events.)

Here are notably good event welfare cards with some info on why/when you should pick them. Cards not mentioned here are whatever. Note that cards get added to the selection pool a number of months after their event, so all story event welfares will eventually end up selectable.

In principle, just pick whatever you need the most at the moment. If your speed cards are lacking, pick speed. If you need a stamina card for a mid/long event, pick stamina. Otherwise probably int > guts >>>> power.

Speed cards: Probably your first choice.

• Special Week: One of your first choices if you’re missing speed cards. The leader recovery she gives can be useful for mid/long builds.
• Fine Motion: Very similar to Spe. You could argue she gives better hints so she could be the better pick if you don’t own her already.
• Tosen Jordan: You probably won’t need to pick her since Spe/FM exist, but she does give a universal gold recovery so could be an option if you really need a gold recovery for other strategies than leader.

Stamina cards: Might need to pick a stamina card to save your ass in a long distance PvP event.

• Biwa Hayahide: The top choice when it comes to stamina welfares because she gives a universal recovery for long distance. Zenno Rob Roy gives slightly higher stats but a bad gold skill. Since neither is a card you’d be very happy about having to use in the first place, I’d say Biwa is more likely going to be useful since gold recoveries can be very important for long tracks.
• Twin Turbo: Similar to Biwa in stats but provides the crucial runner skill Top Runner. If you’re a new player without access to Maruzensky SSR but want to build runners, then maybe this card will help you out sometimes. It’s not a card you’d love to use normally though.

Power cards: None of these are particularly useful.

Guts cards: Urara and Spe (the main story welfare guts card) are strong enough that you probably won’t need these.

• Matikanetannhauser: Pretty strong on paper but she shares the same 0 bond issue as Urara guts, and you probably don’t want two such cards in the deck. So just use Urara instead. 
• Yukino Bijin: Decent if you need Curve Sommelier for whatever reason, otherwise don’t bother too much.
• Mejiro Ryan: Fine for stats too, but lacks good skills unless you’re training for stadium or something.

Wisdom cards: You’ll mostly be fine with SR cards, but Helios is good.

• Daitaku Helios: Actually very good compared to the other int welfares. Gives short skills and a useless gold skill, but the stat gain is good.
• Mihono Bourbon: If you’re dead set on making a runner build work, you might need her gold skill as it’s a strong opening leg accel. But she’s very much sidelined by her gacha SSR and not that good for raising int, so it’s not a pleasant situation to be in.

Support Card Shop

The training pass introduced on the 3rd anniversary introduces a new currency:

This can be used to buy some older cards from a shop. These are mostly useless for long-time players, but new players can pick up some decent cards here. Order of priority should be:

Speed

Kitasan Black is the standout option here, but does want 3LB-MLB. Biko Pegasus is similar in strength but less useful.

Stamina

• Satono Diamond is the most decent option here, but none of these are crazy good.

Power

• Admire Vega and Vodka are both great options.

Guts

• Ines Fujin is the most useful one here.

Wisdom

• All of these cards are about equally strong, with Fine Motion/Mr. CB being the strongest.

I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!