THE SPEED THAT MATTERS

I've seen several battles where a card with high Speed and Dodge ability could easily outmaneuvered the whole attack within a round. For us who sat in the opposite side, its clearly an annoying experience. Speed could bring an early advantage, turning the tide of the battles, or even come out as a random wild-card. Speed is the only parameter which create a RNG effect on a card, which materialized in form of:

1. Chances for earlier order of act (for card with equal speed).
2. Chances for evasion.
3. Chances for hit accuracy.

Speed is the only parameter which doesn't need to scale with the increase of mana cost (you will find card with 2 speed either on 2 mana card or 10 mana card, but you would rarely find low health, armor, or damage parameter on card costing beyond 10 mana. I've underlined the utmost importance of Speed compared to other parameters in my previous post where Swiftness and Slow as the top-most buff/debuff effect to be taken. But sometimes we underestimated the importance of Speed.

And so in this posts, I will bring my view on various angles about Speed parameter of the whole cards on Splinterlands. I listed a total of 303 cards coming from all editions (regular and rewards, except for the Alpha, Beta, and Gladius editions). We will start this by taking the general looks:

• I've make a table mapping the distribution of cards based on their Mana Cost and their Initial (Level 1) Speed. The result shows that most of the cards started with 2 speed. And then the cards are equally divided between the 1 speed and 3 speed. The number gradually decrease starting from 4 speed and above.
  These figures applies rather uniformly across all mana cost. Cards costing 4 to 6 mana seemed to have the most starks difference, having a higher number of 2 speed cards compared to others.
  Cards with 4 or 5 speed are most frequently found starting from 4 to 8 mana cards, while the rest almost have none of these speed and above.

• Next we will continue shift this distribution based on the parameter on the max level. The overall speed have shifted by 1 point which could be seen at glance from the shift of the median from 2 speed near into 3.5 speed. While the out of 71 cards with 1 speed only 26 stay the same, there are still 60 cards with 2 speed, which implies that there are few portion of 2 speed cards which stay the same.
  With more diverse speed parameter, speed play more important roles on high levels because they will be more gap between low and high speed cards. At this point, buff/debuff on speed will be less advantageous if compared with the initial (Level 1) table.
  In addition, I also make a sum-product of each speed level and number of cards, which if compared with the sum-product of previous table will show the relative speed increase for each Mana Cost. We could highlight the fact that cards costing mana between 1 up to 3 mana gained more speed than the rest of the mana cost. Cards costing 3 mana show the most tremendous result reaching an almost 92% which means almost each cards gained double of their initial speed.

- The conclusion of this table show[PLANNING YOUR BUFF AND DEBUFF](https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@kid.miniatures/planning-your-buff-and-debuff)s that the average speed figure are similar for higher and lower mana cost. This is in line with the idea that Swiftness and Slow are the best buff/debuff since they will give equal benefit for higher or lower mana cost.

• Next we will continue to see how the speed for each initial level would grow until the max level. The table below shows that there are less speed growth for cards already starts with high initial speed. The only peculiar things is the cards with initial 2 speed mostly gained +2 growth which exceed the number of cards gained no growth at all. But the most optimal one were cards with initial 3 speed which have show more number of cards reaching 5 and 6 speed at max levels - see the green blocks (compare this with cards having 4 speed at max level, which majorly coming from cards with initial 2 speed - see the red block with a total of 45 cards).

• The next table will maps the cards speed based on the Attack Type. The number of melee cards clearly far greater than the number of ranged card or magic cards, with none attack having the least cards. Most of the melee cards are almost equally divided between 1 and 2 speed, with less number on higher speed. Ranged cards are have a median on 2 speed and are more dispersed toward higher speed. Magic cards have a slight better average speed than melee cards, although a bit lower compared to ranged cards. None attack are somewhat similar to ranged cards but a bit better with the larger number of cards above 4 speed.

• So what's the figure will be after reaching max level speed? Melee cards and ranged cards propel to reached a median of 4 speed. Magic seemed to lack behind and maybe only averaged at 3 speed. None-attack also slightly left behind, but majority of the cards are now on 4 and 5 speed. The actual value changes could be measured from the change of the Combined Product Result. The Melee cards has increased by almost 60% which is far exceed the rest of the attack type. Magic cards only gained 29% which explains its minor increase.

CONCLUSION

Basically this post underline the importance of speed on the battle. Having swift cards for mana cards are as important as the high mana cards one. Swiftness and Slow are the most potent abilities, because they have absolute effect over both low and high mana cards (this as been explained in my previous post, PLANNING YOUR BUFF AND DEBUFF).