I’m new to the game, picking it up pretty well but sometimes I’ll be playing someone who plays a card and it blows my mind the result. I click on the minion after it’s played to read its effect but am left scratching my head because the description is so vague. Things like echo, windstorm? Sometimes there’s so much going on on the board it’s really hard to determine why a certain action happened. Is there a guide that might help make sense of it all?
Hearthstone has many keywords to make the card descriptions much shorter and quicker to understand. You’ll just have to learn the meaning of all keywords.
https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Ability#Keywords
Just refer to it whenever you see a keyword you don’t understand (they’re usually written in Bold).
Even easier is to hover your mouse over any card that has a bold keyword. This will open a popup window explaining the meaning of that keyword.
Windstorm (I think you meant Windfury) is actually descirbed pretty well in the link.
I think this is a clearer explanation for Echo:
Echo - You may choose to cast this spell as many times as you have the mana to do so in ONE turn. If the spell costs two mana and you have eight mana available, you can cast it four times and get its affect four times. You could also chose to cast it fewer times and use your remaining mana for something else.
Wait until you see Wild Growth… and how the hell it does something else completely different not in the card text at some point in the game.
Those are called “Keywords” and you can easily look them up on google. They make cardtexts much less complex and every cardgame has them (to an extend). In HS the devs add one with (more or less?) every expansion so yes, there are a lot of them by now. Luckily some sets that feature them have completely rotated out by now so you don’t have to know them. The ones you should know are:
Battlecry and Deathrattle (most common)/ Charge VS Rush/ Echoe VS Twinspell (latest one)/ Magnetic