G'day everyone, Happy Easter!
A quick introduction as I am new here to the forum, and a quick question. Been playing SO7 for nearly two years, just in offline mode and absolutely love it. Feel like it is time I dipped my toes into the waters of the Online League to see if I am any good.
Of course my timing isn't great with there possibly being only one more season for S07 before SO8 becomes available so my question to you all is, if you were me, would you invest time over the next 4-6 weeks trying to get some horses together in an online stable (to most likely get soundly beaten!), or would you wait for SO8 and start on a level playing field with everyone else. I feel like it would be a good learning curve, but I also feel like I'd be working towards something that is going to be a once off and then I'll be starting all over again with SO8.

A bit more about me - I grew up in England in the 70's and 80's with a horse racing loving father and that is where my passion for the sport derives from. More of a fan of national hunt than the flat, I particularly loved the Grand National and Cheltenham Festival. Some of my earliest memories of horse racing was Rag Trade winning the National and Night Nurse and Birds Nest battling it out at Cheltenham! As a family we emigrated to Perth Western Australia in 1989 and it is then that my love for the sport slightly waned as Perth only has flat racing and my only interest was in watching the Melbourne Cup each year cheering on any UK horses!

Fast forward 30 plus years and with the internet I can watch all the National Hunt racing that I want and my interest is back. A couple of years ago I found SO7 and I have been hooked spending almost a couple of hours everyday playing it. Interestingly in the game I prefer flat to national hunt, but that's probably because I have had more success in training flat winners.

I look forward to reading your thoughts on my question and I look forward to getting to know some of you (hopefully) in the future.

Regards,
Paul

Hi Paul it's best to dip your Toes in now get to see how tough it is i don't know when so8 will arrive so we could easily have two Seasons this year of SO7. I play the Combined game in Online Mode like you my Interest is in NH and maybe you be surprised to Know getting a jump Winner in the league is easier than a Flat winner.

But I will leave that up to you maybe try a Small stable of both Codes it will give you a idea but most of us may have over 60 seasons of breeding the die hards Like Josh 100's lol.

Gray

Thanks Gray,
Yes, I was thinking of starting small, perhaps a handful of flat horses at first. I started a League save about a month ago, skipping the first five seasons, and I'm only seven seasons in after that at this stage! So a long way to go to get anywhere near competitive. Hopefully I can get to about 20 seasons in and see where that puts me.

But the thing I love about this game is that you never really know where you are going to end up, and despite my best plans of half a dozen flat horses you might see me enter with a full stable of jumpers!

All the best,
Paul

Welcome, I'd agree, definitely best to have a go now an get a good feel for what may be needed. You'll likely need to go in with a bit of managed expectations. Coming in this late may be tough, an picking up a few handicaps may be realistic. However, it will definitely really help you in learning what to do for future leagues.

There's plenty of info on here somewhere if you can find it, but definitely ask as many questions as you need, there'll always be someone about to answer them. Or try the discord thing, there's a few of us on that now, running through our seasons

Funnily enough, I am very much a NH fan in real life, however pretty much all my horses, an success has come on the flat in the league. I barely played the NH side until recently, but now I'm really enjoying it.

20 seasons on the flat is just where it starts to get going. All the good ground work for the future breeding is done in these seasons. Take full advantage of all those foreign stallions at this point, as they become much more scarce later on. It should also be enough to start getting a couple of competitive horses in the league, even if only in handicaps. Once you pick up a winner or 2 it will become a lot more addictive.

Hi Paul,

I'd say have a go for next season, it might even be 2 by what I've read. Will keep you engaged and you may learn some trick so when SO8 does start you do have an even playing field.

Plenty of topics on here to get tips. I started a few just asking questions and got lots of advice

Thanks for your comments everyone.

Yes I have been doing a fair amount of reading through the different discussion threads on here and feel like I have an understanding of what is required.
Hardest part so far is ignoring the pretty looking bars (which I have based all my good horses in the offline version of the game on) and keeping horses that have trialed well (I would normally throw most of these out!), but I'm hopeful that in another 10 seasons or so I might have something that might be at least competitive.
I'm finding at this stage I am keeping way too many horses to trial each season, which is slowing me down a bit. I need to be more ruthless and cull a few, but I always think "you never know, this could be the key to unlocking a really good bloodline!"
I guess as I get a few more seasons in this will reduce naturally as I sort out which lines to keep and which are no good. As a guide, how many 2yo's on average would you send to the CK to trial each season? (Just in case I am way over the mark!) Although I guess there is no right or wrong number, it's what suits you best.

Thanks again,
Paul

Depends how many you’re breeding. If we’re talking about flat horses, you are better culling as 1yo’s based on stats. I cull anything at 1 that has less than 75-80, you can probably lower that standard to 70 early on in your breeding programme. Don’t completely ignore stats. They are important, especially Potential (most important) cruising burst an extra speed.

My advice to stats vs CK trialling would be . If you have a horse that wins most races, pretty poor stats, and a horse that is second a lot to it, but with good stats, you have to think a couple of lines ahead. Use both stallions. Use the one with poor stats with as many mates as you can who have good stats. Use the one with good stats to breed to all the mates you have who are pretty good in the CK, but maybe don’t have the best stats. The aim is to them get a load of horses from these 2 stallions that you can breed their offspring with each other. It should improve your horses stats, and improve the CK ability at the same time over 3 or 4 seasons. I tend not to always concentrate on just the 1 seasons offspring. I like to look at the breeding stallions I’m using, work out what I’m likely to get from them, and then plan for what I can do in the next 5 seasons with their offspring. I find this way, using more stallions is the best way to stop lines from disappearing. If you get a complete beast, an over use it for breeding, what’ll happen is, for a few seasons you get good horses, but it becomes much tougher to breed from them as they are all related down the line. These lines fizzle out long term

Thanks Vinny,

It's good to know I am on somewhat of the right path. Usually my best performing horses in the CK tend to be fillies, these go straight to the breeding barn. The best two or three colts who have performed consistently also go to the barn.

I have had a cull off figure which started at 70 and which I have been able to increase to 75 so far. Am thinking of increasing that to 80 soon as I am starting to get a large number of yearlings who are meeting the criteria.

As well as the better performing CK horses I then also keep the highest couple of potential stat colts along with any fillies who match or beat my potential stat culling figure and send them all to the barn.

I also tend keep any progeny from horses that have performed well in the CK in previous seasons as long as their potential is reasonable as well as keeping a line of horses that have high stats in each of the categories, Battling, Confidence, Cruising Burst, Extra Speed, Enthusiasm and Distance. My hope is down the track I can breed those lines into the better performing lines.

So good to know that I am sort of doing it right. A long road ahead no doubt, but it's all part of the fun.

Cheers,
Paul

'As well as the better performing CK horses I then also keep the highest couple of potential stat colts along with any fillies who match or beat my potential stat culling figure and send them all to the barn.'

If I were you I wouldn't keep any horses at all that don't at least compete well in trials. I keep good stats horses, but only if they are able to at least score a few points in my trialling system. So they may not be world beaters or standout in the trials, but they at least have some CK ability. I never keep a horse that just isn't seen in the trials, regardless of breeding or stats.

Welcome to the game, diving in is the way to go and expect to land on rocks, sharp ones, first season is a leaving curve all about getting a sense of how good or bad your game ceiling is.

Don’t entirely agree that you cannot breed well with trials bums, but I do try not to do this to excess, and more frequently with fillies. But I have various experimental lines running for stats where the horse that owns them can’t trial for toffee.

Josh

And resist the urge to season skip early league games, the gold starts to disappear early, if done with league success in mind, the first 20 seasons should just be about grabbing stats and breeding diversity.

The easiest way to think about trial success, the trial gene, or magic juju as I like to call it, is it is either on or off, it’s more complicated really but ‘on’ with average bars beats ‘off’ with great bars just as two ‘on’s the one with the better bars will come out on top more often than not. So you need to have an eye on cracking both bars and the trial gene. Two trial bums can breed a trial star, some trial stars never breed anything decent. It’s a numbers game fundamentally….

My game breeding averages.

Main NH - roughly 250-300 mares, average 50 that make the season one cull.

Experimental NH - 150-200 mares. 30-40 keepers per year.

Main Flat - 200 mares, 40 to 50 taken to racing and training

Experimental Flat - 150 mares 30-40 per season.

The carry through rate can be alarmingly consistent at times

Bloody Hell u the coolmore of the racing league

Thanks Vinny and Josh.

It's good to know what the experts are doing. As you think to yourself "am I doing enough?" or " am I doing too much?"

I'm into my 13th season on a UK combined save (but only concentrating on flat horses at the moment). The first 5 seasons were skipped, so I have had 8 seasons of breeding.

Any who score points in my trials are kept for breeding along with a few high potential colts and any high potential mares so I might cut back on those a bit.

Have just hit January 2033 so am heading to the trials with my latest crop of 2yo's. After culling I still have 72 to trial out!!
They range anywhere from 75 POT to 91 POT, and have either descended from good performing trial horses or good potential horses.

My theory is unless I trial it I won't know how good it is, even if none of it's lineage has performed well in trials before...you just never know!

Thanks as always.

Paul