Speed based system feedback needed.
Hello homemade TCG! I am working on a creature TCG called Spirits: Unbound, fully digital.
I am looking for some feedback on my speed system. Players are having a hard time understand it, and I am having a difficult time displaying it in a way that is understandable.
It works like this, every card has a speed, and that speed shows how many game ticks it takes for it's action to be implemented. Each players queues up their turns at the same time, with multiple actions queued up back to back, the difference between each being the speed of that next action. Then they all resolve in speed order, the game goes one tick at a time, resolving same speed tick speed actions at the same time.
Here is the problem, so many of the players seem to continually think faster Spirits go first, and that is true, but if you queue up another card action before you attack, then your attack may go off second. They also get confused when they get hit twice by an extremely fast spirit before getting even one attack off, and they can't seem to commit to obvious KO's when they have the speed advantage.
Example:
Player A queues Attack (speed 5). Player B queues Utility card play (speed 2), then Attack (speed 4). B's attack lands at tick 6, A's at tick 5 — so A wins the race despite B's faster attack card.
I am not bringing this up saying they are dumb, that is not true at all. I feel like it's a design issue on my end. I included a GIF of my current timeline display. Anyways, I was hoping for some feedback. What do you guys think? Am I just not showing this mechanic well enough? Or is the mechanic too complicated? Any other games you know of work this way, and already solved this issue?