I've been a fan of Starters Orders for many years now and have recently started playing SO4 again with limited success.

I always seem to hit the buffers at the breeding stage. I have the money (through winning races and betting) to be able to purchase good game horses via auction, but the 2yo's I get coming through after breeding tend not to be top class G1 types.

My question is for the experts on here is...

Do I have to breed from horses that are multiple group 1 winners with such like in order to get the best results?

Or is it conceivable that I could get a top class race horse bred from my group 3 winner with say a group 2 winning game mare?

Advice appreciated.

You will easily get very good fillies so breed them with the game bred horses in the barn. They are way better than you own stallions. Ive had 1 horse Akadouville in the barn for 1 season and i bred most of my fillies with him and hes produced some quality horses. 1 of my other stallions has done good as well but the other 2 have failed to produce anything near akas.

Its VERY important to breed with horses who won races in good times. Some stallion may have won 8 G1's but if they were against average horses then that horse itself was probably not that great, so check the winning times and compare with the track and race records.

Cheers for the advice guys, keep it coming...

http://www.startersorders.com/phpBB2/vi ... php?t=5032

check that out. Its very time consuming but the posts about what times to look for and making sure the best non-owned stallions make the breeding barn are very important. Its helped me a lot

I'm not sure that I have ever gotten a decent horse from the auctions.

What i did in the beginning. I bought 5-6 cheap mares. Probably didn't spend more than 5-10k for each. Then spent all the money I could afford on breeding with the best game stallions that were available. I definitely looked at G1 wins and actually at that point how much they cost (which iirc is related to their career winnings). Not that G1 wins or career winnings are precise, but in general you should be picking the better horses.

If you want to go into more detail, look at winning times.

Then I bred for quality. I would rather have 4-5 offspring from 1-2 great stallions rather than 15 offspring from cheap stallions. Of course some of the results won't be all that great but you'll get some good horses. Then those horses go to the breeding barn once they are retired, breed with the best you can afford, lather, rinse, repeat.