Novice guide - How to dodge attacks in Splinterlands

How often do you see the text "miss" in the game, and think to yourself. That was a winning blow! That's unfair! Why didn't my card dodge!

At the beginning I thought this was just random, but over time I read a few articles, and found the below system in abilities and speed, which can help you to create winning strategies.

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So what improves dodging:

SPEED
As mentioned in the tutorial text:
SPEED - Speed determines the order in which characters attack. It also makes the character harder to hit with Melee or Ranged attacks.

The second part can be quantified. The formula to calculate the chance of dodging by speed is:
([SPEED of defender] - [SPEED of attacker]) x10%

So when the attacking monster has 2 speed and the defending character has 5 speed, then there is a 30% chance that the attack will miss. (5-2) x 10% = 3 x 10% = 30%
There is no negative effect if the defender is slower then the attacker. Abilities below might apply with no penalties.

ABILITIES INCREASING DODGE

Abilities add to the dodge chance with a specific percentage.

Basic definition and picture on abilities are taken from splintercards.com. They have also great examples and an overview of the cards with the skills!

Icon	Name	Description
	Flying	Has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from Monsters who do not have the Flying ability. +25% chance of evading.
	Dodge	Has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks. +25% Dodge vs melee/ranged
	Blind	All enemy Melee & Ranged attacks have an increased chance of missing their target. +15% chance of evading

I'm currently in the silver league and I did not met the Blind ability, yet, but good to know that it exists. :)

So a fast card with flying and evade can stand his ground against melee and ranged cards. Unfortunately I had such an experience with the Legendary card Phantom of Abyss!

See my defeat HERE... My Clay Golem had no chance to hit with a dodge chance of: 50% for speed + 25% for flight + 25% for evasion.

Here is a fight, which is more common, and I won :) While the game start uneventful at the end Water Elemental with his high speed ( +30% dodge chance from speed and a good amount of luck) denies Torhilo the Frozens victory.
You can find the fight HERE

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SUPPORTING ABILITIES

Abilities which increase or decrease speed can enhance the dodging for monsters. So lets have the list of these abilities here as well:

Icon	Name	Description
	Backfire	If an enemy misses this Monster with an attack, the attacker takes 2 damage. Making every dodge count! This is a new skill introduced just before the launch of the Chaos Legion expansion.
	Phase	Magic attack can miss this Monster (using the same hit/miss calculation as for Melee and Ranged attacks). Basically if you have the Phase ability, then you can apply the dodge calculation above also to the magic attacks ;)
	Slow	Reduces the Speed of all enemy Monsters
	Swiftess	All friendly Monsters have increased Speed

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COUNTERS

One option to counter dodge is to use the skills above - slow and swiftness against our foe.
But there are also multiple other abilities we can use, let's look into them now:

Icon	Name	Description
	Snare	When attacking enemies with Flying, removes the Flying ability and cannot miss
	True Strike	This monster's attacks cannot miss, blind doen't affect monster with True Strike

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Pro tip:

Be cautious when pairing dodge skills with Thorns or Return Fire. If an enemy misses to hit your cards with these abilities, then these effect won't trigger neither.
An example: I had a Djinn Chvala with thorns and the summoner Brighton Bloom which gives flying, and almost died against combination of the Cerberus with a Spark Pixie. The Cerberus could not hit Djinn Chvala, but healed the damage caused by Djinn Chvala. In the meantime the Spark Pixie slowly damaged my Djinn.

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I hope you liked this overview on dodge in Splinterlands.
If you have any queries, then feel free to reach out to me.