Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 4 saw the introduction of several shiny Elementals to the game mode, and they had a fairly dramatic impact on the minion type overall. In the past, Elemental builds essentially boiled down to using Nomi, Kitchen Nightmare to increase the stats of your Elementals by playing as many of them as you could each turn
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There really weren't any other effective strategies, but the Season 4 Elementals created ways to either make the Nomi build more powerful, or provide interesting new ways to take advantage of Elementals. Here are the best options that were added to your arsenal of Elementals with Season 4.
When Battlegrounds Season 4 first launched, Rock Rock's effect gave one attack/health for each Elemental you played. It turned out that wasn't strong enough, so the ability was doubled. As a result, it can now be the basis of a semi-competitive build.
At the very least, it can be a viable supporting piece of either a Nomi build, or one relating to Magmaloc, both of which want to play multiple Elementals each round. While it still isn't the dominant strategy, you'll be much less sad if you triple into Rock Rock on Tavern Tier 5.
Gusty Trumpeter is technically a minion generator, but it's not a particularly efficient one. Buying and selling five Elementals is a lot of work just to get a sixth Elemental.
However, if you already have an Elemental build in full swing that allows you to generate Elementals, buy them for cheaper, or benefit from playing them, the Trumpeter's effect will trigger more consistently and get greater value when it does.
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Effectively, Gusty Trumpeter allows builds that already wanted to play a lot of Elementals to get even more benefits from doing so. As a result, it can be a valuable component of an Elemental build, even if it isn't the main reason you are playing one.
There are a number of Elementals builds that rely on playing as many Elementals as you possibly can, but Flourishing Frostling is the only minion that gains stats directly when you do so.
Since it doesn't need to be on the board when you play the other Elementals, it is a solid minion in the early and mid-game if you've played even a couple Elementals before then. Five health is enough to compete at that stage of the game, and the Frostling's ability counts itself, so it will always have at least one attack.
In a dedicated Elemental build, which will be playing multiple Elementals per round, the Frostling can have 20 or 30 attack just based on its own ability, and that's not including any other Elemental buffs you happen to have.
Stats alone aren't everything in Battlegrounds, but once a minion gets enough attack, it doesn't need any special features.
Just one trigger of the Dancing Barnstormer's ability can actually make a big difference in the earlier stages of the game. It gives you the same stats as triggering Nomi's effect two and a half times. Nomi will do better in the later turns when you have more gold to work with, but Dancing Barnstormer can be found a Tavern Tier earlier.
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Additionally, the stats it gives will increase even more when combined with Titus Rivendare to double its Deathrattle, allowing Dancing Barnstormer to be the basis of an Elemental build by itself. Even if you don't keep it around forever, the Barnstormer can provide a nice boost to help your build through the midgame.
Elemental of Surprise can only be found at Tavern Tier 6, so you'll have to either level quickly or triple into it. If you can find it, though, the Elemental of Surprise allows you to give Divine Shield to minions that would otherwise be unprotected, making bad minions decent and minions that were already strong even better.
The minion can also be a convenient way to triple a key Elemental. It's at its best on a minion that doesn't have Divine Shield already, of course, but sometimes getting the golden version of a specific minion will simply be your best option.
In its base form, Upbeat Upstart is only as good as your highest-health minion. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you already have a large enough minion on board, but the Upstart really goes into overdrive when tripled.
The golden version increases its health to double that of your strongest minion, including the Upstart itself, so it can grow its stats exponentially, reaching into the thousands.
At that point, how much attack it has basically becomes irrelevant. Your opponent won't be able to kill it even if their own attack is in the triple digits. They'll need something like a Venomous Murloc or Leeroy Jenkins to have even a chance of beating you.
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