Areas of Play
At any given time, every card is located in one of the following "zones":
Library: A player's deck. These cards are kept face down and should be randomly ordered (shuffled) to begin the game.
Hand: A player's hand of cards that can be played. They are kept hidden from other players. If a player has more than seven cards in hand at the end of his or her turn, any extras must be discarded.
Battlefield: Most cards need to enter the battlefield to have an effect in the game. Unlike other zones, the battlefield is shared by all players.
Graveyard: A player's discard pile. When a card on the battlefield is destroyed, a card is discarded from hand, or after a single-use card is used, it is put in its owner's graveyard. These cards are face up, and can be examined by any player at any time.
The stack: This is the place for cards that have been cast, but have not yet resolved. While on the stack, they are called "spells." This zone is also shared by all players. See the stack.
Exile: Cards that have been exiled by a certain effect wind up here. Unless a card says otherwise, cards in this zone are face-up. Comparatively few cards and abilities can affect cards in the exile zone.
Command: Used mainly in some variant formats of play, cards that have a special status or abilities within the game are kept here. Examples are the "scheme" cards used in Archenemy or "plane" cards used for a Planechase game. Cards in the Command Zone can be affected by virtually nothing that affects cards in the other zones.
Read more about this topic: Magic: The Gathering Rules
Famous quotes containing the words areas of, areas and/or play:
“The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know—Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel—the quality of philosophy.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology’s potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“I bow’d not to thy image for succession,
Nor bound thy bow to shoot reformed kindness,
Thy plays of hope and fear were my confession,
The spectacles to my life was thy blindness;
But Cupid now farewell, I will go play me,
With thoughts that please me less and less betray me.”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)