Objects are actually created at the end of the tick.
Not quite, objects are created directly with the action. However, they are not available to be filtered/picked until the next top-level event. The "Pick by unique ID" condition is the exception to this rule, it can be used to pick any object, even if it was just created within the same event stack.
That said, I still don't understand why the "count" expression is acting so weird, and I can't seem to be able to reproduce said behavior.