Hey everyone, Chris with cryptidRacing Collective here to share my thoughts on breeding and a few different strategies our stable is beginning to implement. A big shoutout to Zedgazette.com for the Basic Breeding Guide, which lays out the premise of what I will be expanding on with this post. I called this first post Chapter 1 because undoubtedly it will be the first of many I make documenting my progress towards our ultimate breeding goal of creating top-notch Exclusive and Elite Runners.
My aim this morning was to write a post on our breeding theories, but the latest news from the ZED team about odds and flames is...interesting. Like everyone else, I'm still trying to absorb the newest update and figure out how our Stable strategy needs to realign. Like a good portion of the community, I'm not hot on Flames. They are a half-baked solution to a problem of ZEDs own creation. The simple fact is Virtually Human Studios is a business. They will make decisions in the best interest of them and their investors-not necessarily new users and existing stable owners. We don't have to play the game, but when we do, we play by the rules of VHS. I can complain or look forward, at least for now; my eyes are firmly on the future of our role in the meta-verse.
With true odds going the way of Sea Biscuit to the great horsy field in the sky, I believe it will be more critical than ever for new users to either buy a horse with a proven pedigree or find a new foal with solid racing genealogy. How does one breed a proven runner? Honestly, there are plenty of theories and hypotheses at this stage, and I'm sure a few of them are close to being proven or disproven, but an area of consensus is the role of inbreeding. In the most straightforward chart, a stable owner would take two genesis males and two females and breed the offspring from the different mares together to the exclusive level. An exclusive filly would mate back to the other stallion (i.e., not her grandfather) to produce another exclusive offspring.
Sounds simple right? Let's look at the result from my first run on my Buterin line. My two Stallions are Livius and Smoked. The Mares are Streamers For Saucing and Bank On This. From the Livius line, we got two Legendary girls Ms. Sunshine and Amber Runner. Not wanting Smoked to feel left out, I decided to give him a run with two other females that I considered Night Attire, and Alpize. They produced two additional Legendary files Would Rather be at Brunch and Five on Number 5.
To recap, my four-horse experiment is now a six-horse open relationship with four fillies and no colts. Cool. At least I have four fillies to test. Of those four Amber Runner 'might' be a quality performer, but I want to take her to at least 100 races to assess that. The other three haven't shown any promise at this time.
Looking at my options for continuing the trees this month, I think my best path forward involves breeding the stallions to new mares and going through the discovery process with those new offspring this month. Depending on Amber Runners' continued development, I may breed S4S back with Livius again in September. Still, my hesitation is Streamers For Saucing is a Szabo, and I would like to focus on breeding her to another Szabo or a Nakamoto long term. That said, I'm willing to see if she can inject any raw ability into the line, and it very well may be worth it to keep breeding her to Smoked and Livius till that champion runner emerges. Looking at other Stables and their results, I might be in for a bit of a wait.
I've only just begun to scratch the surface, but I feel this is a good ending point for now. We've discussed our Buterin experiment a bit, and I just assembled the pieces to try a similar four-horse strategy with Finneys and Nakamotos, which I will begin breeding and racing this month. I think it would also be worth introducing some outside genes from a Legendary colt into the equation. For this, I was considering using one of the covers from our new Z4 Legendary Nakamoto Coffee King for Amber Runner to produce a Z17 Exclusive Buterin. There are many twists and turns this plan could experience, and I will be sure to follow up with an update at the end of the month.
See ya on the tracks!
Chris