This is the first entry in what I hope will become a fairly regular series: the Dollar Bin. For now, I’ll be focusing on cards in Standard that you can easily get for about a dollar that are actually quite playable in the right deck. I need to get back to continuing my other series, but with my recent experiences at FNM, I’d like to share some cards that I’ve been finding helpful.
Precinct Captain is a card from Return to Ravnica that I feel doesn’t get a lot of love. I understand that in the current Standard environment, we’re not seeing a ton of mono-white decks, and it seems that there are better uses for the 2-drop slots in most Boros and Selesyna decks. One thing about Precinct Captain, though, is that he has very good synergy with cards like Silverblade Paladin. Let’s take a look.
For one, a first strike 2/2 for only 2 mana is pretty solid right off the bat. He also has a nice nifty effect. Whenever he deals combat damage, you get a 1/1 white Soldier creature token onto the battlefield. I must say, that if those tokens were Humans as well, this would be a pretty ridiculous card in the format. As it stands, though, Captain of the Watch just doesn’t see Standard play these days to make those 2/2 Soldiers with Vigilance. But the Captain is a Human Soldier himself, which helps out about any human deck.
What I find particularly good about Precinct Captain, though, is his interaction with Silverblade Paladin. If you get a Precinct Captain with double strike, that’s the potential for two 1/1 tokens if his attack gets through. For that reason alone, I’m running a play-set of him in a mono-white brew that I’m working on which is also utilizing a future Dollar Bin feature card, Glaring Spotlight.
I do think that with the October 2013 rotation that the Captain will see more play. You could easily get a play-set of these guys for under $3, and if you’re thinking about running a mono-white deck, he’s pretty good. The sad thing is that there won’t be a Silverblade Paladin to make his effect better. Still, I think this guy is pretty good and gets overlooked. I’m hoping to see him be a star at this week’s FNM Standard tourney.
