Ice Castle | Action | $5
The next time you play a card this turn, trash it. If it's a Treasure, +$2. Otherwise, gain a card costing up to $1 more and +2 Cards.
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When you gain or trash this, each player gains a Snow
[...]
At the end of the game, if you don't have enough Treasures to buy a Duchy, end your Action phase with Ice Castle, then play a Vampire, gain a Duchy, and then trashing the Vampire to gain another duchy (and +2 cards).
[...]
Would it trash a Vampire though or does it lose track because of the exchange? (the only official "The next time you play a card this turn" card is Kiln, and since it gains it doesn't care about where the played card is. Also it uses the word first, so you could do that here?
That's feels weird, though, trashing the Vampire then playing it. (and in that case, would the exchange then fail?)
One last note with this - if we determine you don't trash the Vampire (or other cards that move on play, like Horse), then the Otherwise becomes ambiguous. Would it occur if you don't trash (as opposed to if you do trash a non Treasure)
Yeah I just realized Vampire was a bad example. Snow Castle loses track, so the Vampire is not trashed. Good catch. This actually makes Snow Castle pretty good to use on Vampires (gain a free $5!). The draw back is you can't play any Treasures if you want to take advantage of this. I should have used an example like Devil's Workshop.
I didn't intend for the otherwise to be ambiguous, the otherwise was meant for non-Action card. The gaining happens regardless on if you actually trashed a card. If I wanted it to be conditional on successful trashing I would have used either "Trash a card to ..." or "Trash a card. If you did,..." clauses.
Thank you so much for your feedback.
This is my stab at improving the wording:
Ice Castle | Action | $5
After playing your next card this turn, trash it. If it's a Treasure, +$2. If it's not, gain a card costing up to $1 more and +2 Cards.
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When you gain or trash this, each player gains a Snow
I believe this is unambiguous. The "It" is always satisfied from the previous sentence, the card you played, regardless of whether you were able to trash it or not.
I no longer use the "the next time" in order to very specifically say "After" to clarify that. Thanks to Gubump for that input.