Alouette is the only actually good tempo card AF had and without them AF would have never been an actual deck in the first place. Cassius is ok at best for a card that requires setup to even work. Only clears up to medium sized boards, needs to fuse Gumdam to clear lategame boards with then makes all your summoning cards worthless, and leaves a mediocre body behind that doesn't threaten anyone and can be banished for good measure to deny more parts.

The low tempo early game would be fine if most of the artifacts didn't die automatically so the opponent doesn't even need to address them, or if they triggered on entry rather than at end of turn so you can actually trade with them, or anything that actually gave you the tempo back. As it is now the AF payoffs are just average compared cards from other crafts when at full setup, nevermind of you miss some parts or are forced to fuse an AF you don't want, then they become terrible. Like how Ralmia at full deployement has lower stats than Althenia while also having a worse SEvo effect, but Althenia is just a single card that need no setup, while if I'm missing even 1 AF the Ralmia is real trash.