Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Hello,
Quick question is treasures of war considered to be played once placed and not activated? Or is it two played abilities? One to place and One to activate?
 
Treasures of war says place in territory and you may discard this to discard an artifact.

An enhancement is considered played when a character uses it. I'm looking for the official definition of play atm.
For Treasures this means it is considered played when the initial place portion activates.

A card is considered “played” if it meets these criteria:
• You play an enhancement when it is used by a character, unless it is being used by a character in battle because the previous character to use it has been removed from battle.
• You play a character or rainbow site by putting it in your territory or your side of the battle.
• You play any other card type by putting it face up on the playing surface from hand, deck, Reserve, Artifact pile or discard pile due to your ability or game action, except when you discard a card from hand.

That is a legal play since the enhancement has already been played.

Play vs in-play is different. For example, if I place a weapon on a character in territory it’s not considered to have been played since the ability doesn’t activate. However, it does qualify as being a card in-play.

With this in mind, regarding the last entry in the REG quoted above, for the purposes of qualifying for “in-play” on Outsiders’ (gold/Black) ability about having more cards in play than your opponent, would face-down artifacts count as being “in play” but obviously not “played?” I have counted them as being in-play when I’ve used that card. I believe they are due to the rule change about the artifact pile being targetable. Just want to make sure for the purpose of the ability I cited above.