This may be my favorite card to come out since Blue Sun. It is very niche, but it's niche in exactly the way the best tech cards are niche - small but essential effects that indirectly win you the game by dismantling your opponent's winning strategy - and, more importantly, it's ALL the tech cards at once.

Playing against Fast Advance? Forfeit an agenda to go get your Clot or Clone Chip midway through their installation.

Playing against some kind of murder deck? Forfeit the agenda you just unhappily stole off them to go get your Plascrete Carapace.

Just face-planted into a Destroyer because your SMCs were tied up with getting your rig gowing? Forfeit an agenda and return the favor to that Archer, or just get a new breaker and keep going past Ichi like it wasn't even there.

More to the point, it stretches out all your tech cards. These days, Shapers want Plascrete Carapaces for 24/7 News Cycle, Film Critics for Midseason Replacements and The Future Perfect, Deus X for that random person who keeps bringing Personal Evolution to every tournament, New Angeles City Hall if you're that person, a cheap fracter for Wraparound, etc. There's just not enough deck slots to fit all these in so you can have them at the exact moment you need them more than anything, and leaning on your existing search tools (i.e. Self-Modifying Code) produces an externality chess players call an "overworked piece" - when your Queen is protecting both your Knight and your Rook, you're bound to end up losing one when she has to save the other. Artist Colony just softly pats you on the head, says, "it's okay, we all make mistakes," and gets you back into a game you otherwise would have lost.

"But if you haven't scored any agendas, it doesn't help," you tell me. Let's face it, for one, if you can't score any agendas, odds are good either you're already locked out of the game or your opponent isn't getting substantially closer to winning and you don't really need a tech card instantly, so this isn't the card for you.

But for me, who enjoys playing Aesop-based decks that already can use 0-cost assets as "Easy Marks," it's a vital card that never feels totally bad. And it's only been two weeks, and I've already lost track of the number of games I won solely because I had Artist Colony to save me from the blowout.

Turns News Team, Shi.Kyū and Domestic Sleepers into paid ability speed program/resource/hardware tutors, which by itself is pretty good stuff. However, it is meta dependant, which means unless you don't mind the variance (which you really should), you want support for this card.

Fortunately, Fan Site is in faction and does the job. But then you have at least two resources that cost precious clicks to draw and install just sitting around not helping you win until you or the Corp scores.

The other option is to just ditch an actual Agenda. In some circumstances this can be worth it. Going up against a kill deck, and worried that that agenda you just stole means you are about to see Midseason Replacements? Forfeit it and go grab a Plascrete Carapace. But then Film Critic does you one better and let's you keep the agenda for 2 clicks, and is much more useful in other situations. Or maybe you need a breaker to threaten a scoring remote and you didn't really need that Hostile Takeover to win if there's a Global Food Initiative waiting for you inside.

However, this is Shaper we are talking about. You have plenty of program tutors already. And 3 influence is a hefty cost for a card that does you nothing most of the game. Iain Stirling: Retired Spook is a possibility, but he'd probably rather see Data Dealer.

There are are certainly some good plays here, but the high variance and low splashability means this card is a meta call at best and a dead slot at worst.