It's great Zee is on this series more often! His tastes and opinions seem to really round out the group. You should add his Nothing Personal card likeness to the intro.
Rules clarification: the Money shown on the Museum cards represents a bonus payout for each delivery, not for each artifact in the delivery. Each artifact is just $1 at each museum.
Glad to hear you didn't think the downtime was horrible. I'm still waiting on my KS copy to arrive. Apparently my first one never made it to the post office for shipping. :( I should have the game next week at the latest, though. Looking forward to giving it a go.
Artifacts Inc feels like Keyflower but with dices instead of meeples. Worker/Dice placement must have! Beautiful artwork. I'll be buying it most certainly (as soon as coolstuff inc has it back in stock hehehe)
+Gabriel Ferreira, except without the cutthroat final round bidding that takes the game from a process my wife really enjoys to a game she never wanted to see again, and I traded away.
Ryan the designer released this variant through Bgg a couple of days ago. Looks like it'll lessen downtime and add a little player interaction. boardgamegeek.com/thread/1416176/official-variant-designer-beta-version
Played it both 2 and 3 and they both work great. But I think 3 is possibly the sweet spot for this one. It adds more suspense on the museum deliveries and it doesn't go too long. I suspect with 4, the game could possibly become too long for what is.
I'm worried about how heavily this game favors high dice rolls. Roll three sixes and you can do whatever you want; roll three ones and it looks like your only option is Canyon Expedition + Private Collectors + Guide Work, for a grand showing of $2. So many cards that say 4+ or 5+, but apparently none that say 3- or 2-, nor any that say Evens or Odds. I suppose $2 is still enough to buy many of the A cards, though, which would also slowly earn you victory points. Still, I think I might like this better if one of your starting cards took any one die to modify the value of two others (three if upgraded), or modify one die two values (three if upgraded). Sacrifice one action to improve your options for the others. I suppose I could always house-rule in something like that...hmm. All speculation on my part, by the way. I haven't played this yet.
I played it once and did feel like the dice rolls got a tad swingy at times, never enough to ruin the game, but I still think a better method could have been used, I think bag building with numbered meeples. It was a decent game, but not one I care to play again.
