Every day there is brand new people coming to Splinterlands. As a beginner, it's known that there is a lot of information to process in this game, and always room to be learning more new things in order to help gameplay, renting cards, buying things from the market, etc. One of the bigger things that I've found as a beginner that I had NO clue about, was the speed of cards. As a beginner, I looked at the cards and wondered what the grey symbol with spikes on it was, as I'd never really played any sort of "fighting" game beforehand. The symbol that I'm talking about is the Melee symbol... yes I was that much of a noobie, again, always something new to learn for everyone! After playing the game and learning a bit more, I was very concerned about what the blue circle in the bottom left meant for the characters. I later came to find out that this bubble means speed. My knowledge was left at that... where I knew that the blue circle meant speed, but what did that REALLY mean? I was playing the game and started to get a bit frustrated because I had chosen the same card as someone on my enemy team, and his monster went first. I thought, "What?! How can that be fair?! We literally have the same card!" So... I went looking around to find out what the deeper truth of speed is. What I found has helped me, and can help so many of you in your gameplay, and teaching others!
<-- this is the speed bubble that I've referred to!
I found that: (Speed Difference x 10%) + 25% (if there is dodge) + 25% (if there is flying but it won't work on other flying troops or snare troops) + 15% (if there is blind) = Evade Chance
What this means is that every difference in the number of speeds is 10%, not to forget the mention of if your monster has wings, then that means they get an extra 25% chance to evade (only to ground troops attacking a winged monster). For example, if you have a card that has 5 speed, that has wings on it, that's going to be a 75% chance that that monster is going to not get hit by a ground monster! Remember, again as I said, the wings only give the percentage boost by ground monsters that try to attack it.
There is one thing that also needs to be talked about, and this is the question "What if we have the same cards speeds?" And it's important to be noted that at that point, it's a coin flip of which card goes first. You have a 50/50 chance of who's card will attack first. This can also be referred to as "RNG" which means Random Number Generator, and you want to hope at that point that you're going to have good RNG!
Note that magic doesn't miss (until later on in playing, there's some cards that can change that).
One last thing to realize, is that if speed is equal turn order goes like this: magic -> ranged -> melee last.
I hope this helps everyone that's read this, and now you have a better understanding of what speed does in Splinterlands, and how you can take this into your gameplay and become a winner!
Best luck to all of you, happy playing!