Val has always confused me a little, i understand the idea of how her mechanic works, but not the specifics, can cards like godswoods/fifedoms/streets be used to lower the cost of a character that she might draw? Can Robb stark (kots) make an army free to play? Are normal play restrictions in effect, limited keyword for example?

By my understanding you cant use reducing locations or robbs ability as they themselves are actions and val stipulates that your NEXT action must be to play the card if able, also that restrictions like limited apply as nothing in vals text allows you t bypass this.

Is there anything im missing or not getting?

If you know what the top card of your deck is going to be a character, you could queue up various reduction in the marshalling phase before using Val.

For example by using a Wolf Herald to search for a War Host of the North putting them on the top of your deck, next you can kneel Robb to reduce the cost of the next army you play to 0. Then use Val to reveal, draw and play the War Host for nothing.

If you don't know what the top card of your deck is you could still use things like a Godswood in the hope that you see a character with Val and if you don't you can still use the reduction on a character from your hand instead.

Just to be perfectly clear, you can't use any of those reducers between triggering Val and playing the card she lets you draw. As you correctly observed, using all those reducers are actions, and your "next" action is supposed to be playing the drawn card.

However, Tag is highlighting the fact that you can use reducers before triggering Val, allowing the reducers to be applied to the "next" character you play - the one drawn from Val.

Excellent, cheers for clearing that up guys.