Tenderize
Instant
Target creature you control deals damage equal to its power to target creature an opponent controls.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Price
- $0.12
- EDHREC rank
- #18782
Tenderize gives a creature +2/+0 and trample until end of turn, then lets you put a +1/+1 counter on it if it dealt combat damage — pump, trample, and a sticky bonus stapled together for two mana. It's a serviceable combat trick in go-wide or counters-matters strategies, but it competes in a crowded slot and rarely makes the cut outside very specific builds.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Tenderize fits narrowest in decks that care about +1/+1 counters landing reliably, since the counter payoff requires combat damage to connect — easy to blank with a chump blocker. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Pioneer, instants that cost two mana need to either win combat decisively or generate card advantage; Tenderize does neither reliably enough to see play. Pauper is the one format where efficient pump tricks can occasionally find a home, but even there the conditional counter clause is too slow. Standard is the most plausible home if a counters synergy deck exists in the format, but Tenderize still sits near the bottom of the consideration set.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.12 bulk tier
At $0.12, Tenderize is deep bulk — you're paying essentially nothing for what it does. Bulk rares and uncommons with narrow applications rarely move off this floor unless a synergy deck breaks out, so don't expect the price to shift.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.