Halberdier

Four mana for a 3/1 with first strike tells you exactly what era of design produced it: a time when first strike on a fragile body was priced as a premium keyword rather than the baseline filler it later became. The toughness is the tell. A 3/1 dies to almost everything, but first strike means it lands its damage before the blocker (or attacker) can answer, so it wins most fights against three-toughness creatures lacking first strike of their own without taking a scratch. The limitation is purely structural: it answers nothing on defense that it cannot already kill on offense, and a single point of incidental damage, a chump that survives, or any removal at all sends it to the graveyard. This is a creature built to win one combat cleanly, not to grind out value, and the price reflects a philosophy where reliable dominance on a small body was worth paying full freight for. Later red commons delivered the same first-strike beat on cheaper, sturdier frames, which is why the rate reads conservative now. As a snapshot of how the keyword was valued before it became cheap, it is honest about its job: trade up once, win the math of the one exchange it is built for, and accept that almost anything answers it the moment the math stops favoring it.