Zones & Last Known Information

Zone changes, LKI, and abilities that look for something no longer there.

The rules are CR 400–408. The "new object" rule is 400.7 and its exception list follows it; last known information hangs off 113.7a, with the static-ability exception at 604.7.

A normal game uses seven zones: library, hand, battlefield, graveyard, stack, exile, command. Library and hand are private; the other five are public, meaning all players can see the cards' faces.

The one rule that explains everything

An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object, with no memory of or relation to its previous existence.

This single rule accounts for an enormous amount of Magic:

• Bouncing your own creature clears the counters, Auras and Equipment off it.
• A removal spell fizzles when its target changes zones, because the object it was pointed at no longer exists.
• A creature that dies and comes back is not "the same" creature for anything that was tracking it.
• Exiling something in response to a graveyard-recursion trigger strands it, because the trigger can't find it.

Related corners: exiling an object already in exile doesn't change zones, but it becomes a new object that has just been exiled — which is exactly how one exile effect can be used to permanently strand another's card. The command zone has matching rules.

There is a documented exception list, and the important entry is this: abilities that trigger on a zone change can find the new object it became in the zone it moved to. Without that carve-out, "when this Aura is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, return the enchanted creature" — and hundreds of cards like it — simply wouldn't work.

Last known information

An ability on the stack no longer belongs to its source. Once activated or triggered, an ability exists on the stack independently of its source, and destroying or removing that source afterwards doesn't affect it.

So killing the creature in response to its ability achieves nothing. Respond to the ability, not the permanent.

When such an ability needs information about a source that has left — "this creature deals damage equal to its power" — it uses the source's last known information: the characteristics as they last existed on the battlefield, counters and pump effects included. A dying creature still deals its full damage.

The exception: static abilities cannot use last known information to determine how their effects apply.

Ownership beats control

If an object would go to any library, graveyard or hand other than its owner's, it goes to its owner's corresponding zone instead.

Steal an opponent's creature and let it die: it goes to their graveyard, not yours. You can borrow a permanent; you can never make it end up in your graveyard.

Battlefield facts

• Every object on the battlefield is a permanent, and permanents exist only on the battlefield. A creature card in hand is a card, not a permanent. A creature spell on the stack isn't a permanent either. "Destroy target permanent" can never reach outside the battlefield.
• A spell or ability affects and checks only the battlefield unless it specifically mentions a player or another zone. A card that says "count the creatures" counts creatures on the battlefield — never in graveyards or hands.

Zone restrictions and ordering

Cards of certain types can't enter certain zones, and when they'd try, they simply stay where they are — no exile, no destruction, nothing triggers. An instant or sorcery card that would enter the battlefield remains in its previous zone. A plane or scheme card can never leave the command zone.

Libraries, graveyards and the stack are ordered, and the order can't be changed unless a rule or effect allows it. Anyone may look through a graveyard at any time, but not reshuffle it — which matters for cards that care about the top card of a graveyard.

26 questions in this track, checked against the 2026-06-19 Comprehensive Rules.

Rules covered: 110.1, 111.7, 111.8, 113.7a, 114.1, 114.5, 400.1, 400.2, 400.3, 400.4, 400.4a, 400.4b, 400.5, 400.7, 400.7e, 400.7f, 400.8, 400.10, 401.1, 401.2, 403.2, 403.3, 404.1, 404.2, 405.1, 406.1, 406.3, 408.1, 601.2a, 603.10, 604.7, 608.2, 608.2b, 608.2h, 704.5f.