I am new to the game, and the impressions that I'm getting with some of these Locations doesn't compute with the decklists I'm seeing.
Take this location list for a Stark deck, for example (not mine):
3x Great Keep
3x Narrow Sea
2x Crossroads
1x Godswood
1x Lord Eddard's Chambers
1x Winterfell Castle
1x Street of Steel
1x Street of Sisters
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14 Locations total, 13 of which are actual gold/influence (resource-based) locations.
This seems about right as in my decks I've been running 15 resources and usually feel over my curve in both gold and influence. I've been thinking about bringing it down to something like 13 or 14 instead depending on the deck.
3x GREAT KEEP:
0 cost, Limited, +1 gold.
---Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this seems like a near staple at 3 for Stark decks. Adding Gold to your gold pool is always useful. The earlier these come into play, the more cumulative value you get from them. Being Limited doesn't hurt them much, it just keeps them from being completely broken.
3x NARROW SEA:
0 cost, 1 Influence, possibility of a one-time discount of 2, but only on in-house characters.
---Sorry, but these discount cards don't seem very good to me. Especially ones of this kind. Even at zero cost, it seems like there's better ways to get influence on the board. The discount only works on in-house characters and since you only get to do that once, your additional card investment might get wasted by a board wipe, giving your opponent a higher net card advantage afterward. I get the appeal of being able to marshall out three of these on setup and not having to wait a round to get the benefit of a card like gold producers, but there seems to be better ways to do that too (fiefdoms?).
2x CROSSROADS:
2 cost, +1 Gold, 1 Influence
---These are really good. They pay for themselves after two turns. Since they don't 'kneel' to give you the gold, the influence is always there when you need it. That said, they are strictly worse than the unique locations that can be played as attachments (such as Khal Drogo's Tent) due to costing 2 gold instead of 1. This seems like a 'filler' resource rather than a staple, though it's close.
1x GODSWOOD:
2 cost, during the Marshalling phase you can kneel it to discount the cost of a Stark character by 2.
---Discount card again. It can only be used on Stark crested characters, so it's useless on a turn where you are not going to marshall out a Stark-crested character. It doesn't have any uses outside of being a discount for two. That said, I'd probably play it above Narrow Sea. Nothern Fiefdoms seem to be a better discount card all around because you can use it on any Stark card rather than just characters, plus they can be used (alternatively) for influence.
1x LORD EDDARD'S CHAMBERS:
1 cost, unique, +1 gold, 1 influence, can play as an attachment to your House card.
---Why, oh why are people only playing one of these in their deck lists? Why not play three? Being able to play it as an attachment on an indestructible card is pretty amazing because it gets around cards that target or partially board-wipe locations, and it's not likely to get hit by attachment hate. This seems like more of a staple than Great Keep.
1x WINTERFELL CASTLE:
3 cost, All Stark characters you control get +1 str
---This seems like an auto-include in a Bear Island deck that prefers weenies, but not necessarily anywhere else. That's all I'll say here.
1x STREET OF STEEL:
0 cost, limit 1 per deck, kneel it to discount the cost of a character with a military icon by 1.
---Even if every single character I had had a military icon, I just can't see myself playing this.
1x STREET OF SISTERS:
0 cost, limit 1 per deck, kneel it to discount the cost of a character with a power icon by 1.
---Even if every single character I had had a power icon, I just can't see myself playing this.
So anyway, that's the general impression I'm getting with locations and it's leaving me quite confused. Maybe I'm disregarding the strength of zero cost non-limited locations too much. If I am, please set me straight.