I encountered a 196 speed Biggs in GW today with Wedge lead (no extra speed from leader, but +45 from unique) which gave Biggs 241 speed.
My JE had 203 speed, +50 (or +40?) from a full droid/jawa squad should have given him 253 (or 243, not sure) speed, anyway I should have gone first. I should mention that before this node, I had been using Rebels for fun so all my droids+JE were at 0% TM.
Enemy Biggs kept going first and my entire squad almost wiped. I was like ok, lemme swap mods. I took a 5 speed diamond from B2 and swapped it with a 4 speed diamond on JE. Now JE had 204 speed. He went first and I passed the node losing very little protection.
Maybe part of the "AI is dumb, let's boost their stats" solution the devs have come up with involves a raw speed boost as well. Regardless, even +1 speed on my JE made the difference in allowing me to pass the node with everyone alive. If anything that says just how important speed is.