Rules
Comprehensive Rules
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9 Sections147 chapters
Zones9 chapters
400. General
400.1
A zone is a place where objects can be during a game
400.10
If an object in the command zone is put into the command zone, it doesn’t change zones, but it becomes a new object that has just entered the command zone.
400.11
An object is outside the game if it isn’t in any of the game’s zones. Outside the game is not a zone.
400.12
Some effects instruct a player to do something to a zone (such as “Shuffle your hand into your library”). That action is performed on all cards in that zone. The zone itself is not affected.
400.2
Public zones are zones in which all players can see the cards’ faces, except for those cards that some rule or effect specifically allow to be face down. Graveyard, battlefield, stack, exile, ante, and command are public zones. Hidden zones are zones in which not all players can be expected to see the cards’ faces. Library and hand are hidden zones, even if all the cards in one such zone happen to be revealed.
400.3
If an object would go to any library, graveyard, or hand other than its owner’s, it goes to its owner’s corresponding zone.
400.4
Cards with certain card types can’t enter certain zones.
400.5
The order of objects in a library, in a graveyard, or on the stack can’t be changed except when effects or rules allow it. The same is true for objects arranged in face-down piles in other zones. Other objects in other zones can be arranged however their owners wish, although who controls those objects, whether they’re tapped or flipped, and what other objects are attached to them must remain clear to all players.
400.6
If an object would move from one zone to another, determine what event is moving the object. If the object is moving to a public zone and its owner will be able to look at it in that zone, its owner looks at it to see if it has any abilities that would affect the move. If the object is moving to the battlefield, each other player who will be able to look at it in that zone does so. Then any appropriate replacement effects, whether they come from that object or from elsewhere, are applied to that event. If any effects or rules try to do two or more contradictory or mutually exclusive things to a particular object, that object’s controller—or its owner if it has no controller—chooses which effect to apply, and what that effect does. (Note that multiple instances of the same thing may be mutually exclusive; for example, two simultaneous “destroy” effects.) Then the event moves the object.
400.7
An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence. This rule has the following exceptions.
400.8
If an object in the exile zone is exiled, it doesn’t change zones, but it becomes a new object that has just been exiled.
400.9
If a face-up object in the command zone is turned face down, it becomes a new object.