Hi, great article, very similar to what I've been using, how do you get the form to save in the CK though? Mine never saves, I have to manually record it

What Can You Expect When You Join the League

DON'T BE AFRAID to ask questions, the people who use this forum will always do their best to answer any question.

First of all, the league is much more competive than a standard game. Most of the better trainers have had lots of seasons to perfect their breeding.

As a new trainer to the league your best horses that have won 20+ G1 races in a standard game will probably only be able to compete in handicap races to start with, but don't let that put you off. In my first season in the league, I think I won about 2 handicap races but the experience I gained in just that first season stood me in good stead for future seasons. Now I regularly win G1 races.

The flat part of the league is probably harder to break into than the NH side of the league. Green bars are all important in the flat game, but not quite so important in the NH game.

When you are entering horses into races, don't put them straight into Group races, start off with some handicap races and if your horses do well, you can then enter them into races at a higher level.



A brief description of how my game is organised.

I don't have one long game that I use. I have four saved games for the flat, (a saved game for sprinters, another for milers, middle distance and long distance), and four saved games for the national hunt, (saved games for 2 milers, 2m 4f, 3 miles and long distance horses).

I only concentrate on one distance at a time.

I don't use the standard schedule that comes with the game, I have a short schedule that lasts only 5 months for the flat and a combined flat\jumps game for the NH. I have found that a horse only needs a maximum of 4 races per season and if a horse has not reached its potential after 4 races per season, it never will and it is retired from the game.

My schedules can be downloaded here.

There are two files for the flat and two files for the NH. They are both for UK based games.

https://app.box.com/s/2i78c0e61kspwdpazn8xgbnz51rmo3sq - flat schedule
https://app.box.com/s/jl379h2n99l81zz9cuur263ik7wp31wj - flat showcase
https://app.box.com/s/nq21lni94ay1xcgcdoai1tzx8urvsrh4 - combined schedule.
https://app.box.com/s/fxx831v9ao9v3iaoog3zuokn1g355366 - NH showcase

If you only want to use the combined schedule, you will still need both of the showcase files.

The two schedule files go here: Documents\StartersOrders6\exports\schedules\1
and the two showcase files go here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Starters Orders 6\data\1
Before you download the two showcase files, make a backup of the original in the SO6 folder so that you can go back to the originals if you don't like the schedules.


I have one other saved game, (it usually only lasts about 5 seasons), and it is used for experimenting with. Any good horse that is produced in this game is saved to the transfer pool, (a ttf file), and imported into one of the saved games above. This is the game I used in the section at the bottom of the page.


You DO NOT have to use short schedules to be successfull in the league. You can use the standard schedules and still be successfull, but what you do need for the flat game is horses with very good green bars. If you use the method described below to get good green bars, you can play a standard game thereafter. The only reason I use short schedules is that you get through a season faster and that lets you breed more horses and when you try something new, you see the results quicker.

There are advantages to using a combined schedule. The main advantage is all your horses are in the same game and you can try horses out over the flat and fences without having to use ttf files to transfer horses between games. I have stopped using a jumps only game in favour of a combined game. In a jumps only game you can only start racing a horse at 3yo and you miss out on 2yo racing which usually improves a horses potential bar quite a bit. When using the combined game to breed jump horses, I race the jump horses over the flat at 2yo and 3yo, then start them in NH Novice races as 4yo.




Finding That First Good Stallion to Start a Breeding Program

The most important green bar is the potential bar. In a flat game the top trainers usually have horses that have full potential bars as 3 year olds and in the NH game, full potentail bar at 5yo.

For flat horses, the best place to find horses with full green potential bars is in a US based game and for NH horses in a UK game.

The other two bars that are most important are the extra speed bar and the cruising burst bar.

I have never seen a gamebred horse with good green bars in every category. What I do is look for a horse with one or two good bars and breed with that horse and then later look for a horse with different green bars and breed with that horse.

Some people visit the weekly auction sales looking for good horses but I found my first horse with a full potential bar when I started a new game. What I did was keep starting new games on easy mode, look at the stallions the game provides and check its bars. If there is no good horse, quit the game and start a new game. This can be a boring\tedious process and can sometimes mean starting about 40 new games before you find that good horse, but it only takes about an hour to do this and it is an hour well spent. Very rarely does the game supply any good mares.



The Breeding Method

Flat horses are very dependant on green bars. In most cases, the better the green bars, the better the horse performs. I only have about 12 - 15 mares and 4 stallions in the breeding barn in each saved game. The horses in the breeding barn are always the best of the best horses I have bred. I sometimes only keep horses for about 5 seasons in the barn as I am always looking to breed with the next generation of good horses.

To start with, I only breed the best green bars horses with the best green bars horses. Later, once all my horses have good green bars, I export them to the race builder, ( sometimes referred to as the CK) and I only breed with the horses that have performed well in the race builder. The race builder is closest approximation to the race conditions in the league.

Beccause I use short schedules that only last a few months and I very rarely watch any races, a season only takes about 20 minutes to play. The reason I don't watch any races is: how horses perform in the CK is all that matters, how horses perform in the main game has no relevance to how they will perform in the league. A horse can win 20+ races in the main game and be rubbish in the CK and horses who are only average in the main game can perform well in the CK.

I export flat horses as 2, 3 or 4 year olds to the CK at the end of each season and pick the horses that have performed best in the CK to send to the breeding barn. I export NH horses as 2 mile 4yo, 2 mile 5yo, 2m 4f 5yo, 3 mile 6yo, 3m 4f 7yo and 4 mile 8yo horses.

Once you start exporting horses to the CK for trialling, you can end up with hundreds of horses in the CK. It is best to think of some way to organise them into groups of similiar horses. I have groups for flat horses as 5f 2yo, 6f 2yo, 7f 2yo, 8f, 2yo, 10f 2yo, 5f 3yo, 6f 3yo, 8f 3yo up to 16f 3yo and then you can do the same for 4yo horses if you wish. I do the same for NH horses as 2 mile 4yo, 2 mile 5yo, 2m 4f 5yo, 3 mile 6yo, 3m 4f 7yo and 4 mile 8yo horses.

These groups tend to reflect the types of races that you can find in the league. I don't have as may groups in the NH side of things. The groups in the NH reflect more about the ideal age a horse should be to go NH racing.

When I trial horses in the CK, I only have about 10 - 14 horses in each race. In each race I usually have a pacemaker and the two best horses from my previous trial plus about 8-10 new horses. Trialling in the CK is not an exact science, sometimes race results can be very inconsistant. I usually give each horse about 8 races to demonstrate their abilities. Look at the horses listed in the race below.



The first horse is the pacemaker and can be ignored. The two horses whose name ends in shield were the two previous best horses and those horses whose name ends in castle are the new horses. I want to find the best stallion for my next generation of breeding from the castle horses who in the last 8 races have performed slightly better than the shield horses. When you look at their race results and handicaps there is very liittle to choses between some of them. Should I choose Aberdeen who has won 2 out of 8 races or should I choose Dunfermline who has only won 1 out of 8 races but has slightly better consistancy? In all probability, I will breed with both of them, but if I had to choose just one horse to upload to the league, I would choose Dunfermline because of the slightly better consistancy or even choose one of the two castle mares at the bottom of the racecard.


Most horses only last about 5 seasons in the barn as I am always looking to breed with the next generation of good horses. Also, every good horse that I breed is saved to the transfer pool. I do this partly because SO6 sometimes crashes and I don't want to lose my best horses and sometimes my breeding hits a dead end and I go back to the horses in the transfer pool and start again.

I don't have one big transfer pool (ttf file). I have lots of smaller ttf files. I have seperate folders where I store ttf files. These are organised by race distance and the season in which I bred the horses. So I will have ttf files for 6f season 1, 6f season 2, 8f season 1 etc.. It is also a good idea to regularly back up any saved games and ttf files to an external source such as a USB drive.

Because I have saved my best horses to a ttf file, if I find a horse that is really good, it is easy to transfer that horse from a 6f saved game to a mile saved game and you can introduce new breeding lines to any saved game this way.

When you save horses to the transfer pool they are lost from the game, but there is a way to save them to a ttf file and keep them in your game as well.

If you save your game just before the end of the season, then export your horses to ttf file and progress to the next season, the horse has gone from the game. At this point, don't save the game again, press CRTL ALT DEL keys and use task manager to shut the game down. Now if you load the saved game, the horse is in the transfer pool and also still in your saved game.

Once your horses reach a certain level they don't improve very much, then it is time to introduce new blood into your breeding lines. There are several ways to do this: visit the weekly auctions and buy a horse that has won a few group races, use the method described above about restarting new games or the method I prefer is to breed your best mares with the gamebred stallions in the breeding barn.

If I want to improve my flat horses, I start a new US based game and over two seasons import my best 12 mares, then breed with every gamebred stallion that has won a group race. Most of the foals will be poor but you are looking for I good colt that is better than the horses you already have. These games usually only last about 8 seasons and if no good foals are produced, I quit the game and start a new game.

I do the same for NH horses, but use a UK based jumps game for this.




How to Quickly Improve Green Bars.

I must admit, this technique was not totally inspired by myself, but from hints and tips posted by Paul, Thunderspark and a few other trainers.

This method works best when you concentrate on improving one or two green bars at a time.

This technique uses a small schedule that lasts only 5 months and the transfer pool, (ttf files). I assumes that you have saved your best horse to a ttf file.


First Step is to create a new game that will be used as the starting game for the future.

I usually start on easy mode, so the first thing I do in the new game is sell the 5 horses that start the game.

Now you need to import from ttf a good horse that will not be used in any breeding programs but is capable of winning the odd race.

I usually recieve about £2m from selling the 5 startup horses. I find that this is not quite enough money. Usually £5m is plenty, so I enter the horse I imported into a few races and bet on it to get more money.

When you have enough money buy all the stable improvements.

I don't watch any races. The whole point of this is to quickly progress through the seasons and improve green bars, not to win races at this point.

Progress the game to near the end of the season, maybe about 3 days before end of season.

Save the game and exit from SO6.

Create a new folder, lets call it the Start folder for the sake of a better name.

Now you have to copy the game you just saved to the Start folder. You need to copy 5 files. I will assume it is save 7, so copy the files called, 7.btag, 7.sav, ext7.sav, in7.idx, o7.idx to the start folder.

Now to start breeding.

In this example, I am going to assume that the stallion has the green bars I want to introduce into my breeding program, but the same process works for mares as well.

In my example, I was trying to get the cruising burst of the stallion with the potential and extra speed of the mares. I found the stallion by restarting new games until I found a horse I liked.









Import the stallion and your best 4 mares that have the green bars you want. The mares can be any distance, they are just your best 4 mares.

Now export the 5 horses to the breeding barn.

We are not going to breed with them just yet, I want more mares in the barn, so continue the game until the new season has started.

Now you can import the stallion and 5 mares again, then send them to the breeding barn.

Now you have 2 copies of the stallion and 9 mares in the barn.

Now breed all the mares and then use that first horse you imported to quickly skip to near the end of the season. There is no need to watch races as they are not important to the horses in the barn.

Now you need to save and exit from the game.

Create a new folder. Since this was game slot 7 and I have no imagination, I called the new folder Save 7.

Copy the 5 files for game 7 to the new folder.

Now if you progress the game to the start of the new season you have 9 foals in the barn.

We are not going to do any more breeding. As quickly as possible, use the first horse to progress to the start of the next season.

Now look at the bars of the new 2yo horses. In my example I am only really interested in the Colts. I am looking for a colt that has the cruising burst of the stallion I sent to the barn and a slight improvement in the potential bar.

Usually, if the stallion has 60% potential and the mare 100% potential, you should get a foal with 80% or better potential.

If there is no decent Colts, don't worry, we will try again. I produced this horse after a few attempts. His bars are better than his sires but some bars are till not as good as the mares.






Copy the files from the folder called Save 7 back to the main saves folder and repeat the last seasons as quickly as possible. You will find that there are 9 totally different foals in the breeding barn.

Check these foals for their green bars. If there is no success, repeat the process again.


Once you have found that Colt that is better than the original stallion we are going to breed that stallion with the mares again.


Now you start the process all over again.

Copy the files from the Start folder back to the main saves folder and import the new stallion and the mares again.

Now you repeat the above process again, looking for a stallion that is better than the newer stallion.


Eventually by repeating the above proceedures I produced this horse.







Now that you have horses with better green bars, import them into a normal saved game and breed and trial your horses as described near the start of this post.