Situation came up at a Legacy GPT yesterday where my opponent and I were both playing Death & Taxes. Opponent goes to activate his Vial on 2, so I activate my Vial on 3 in response. My Vial resolves, I put Flickerwisp into play and with the ETB ability I target opponent's Aether Vial.

My assumption was that when the Vial is exiled, the counters on it are zero, so when the opponent's Vial's ability resolves the opponent can only put into play a 0 CMC creature. Opponent sort of agreed, but we called the judge just in case - the judge happened to be an L1 who was not very familiar with Legacy. He looked it up, said it was a "last known information" situation, and checked via text message with his L2 (who was not present at the event). L2 confirmed "last known information."

Later in the event I was playing against BG Depths. I activate Vial, opponent goes to sac his Hexmage to remove counters. Judge confirmed that since Vial hasn't left play, it has 0 counters when it resolves. He explained that this was different than the exile situation prior (and by extension, a destroy effect) where "last known information" applies.


Are both of these situations correct? The Wizards site does not seem to have any additional rulings in the Gatherer.