Hoping to clarify question about the setup phase

My friend plays a stark dek using north agendas. Many of the army cards he runs play off of this allowing their cost to be lowered by number of agenda cards he is using. For example, he can usually Marshall out army cards with a printed cost of say 8 gold for roughly 2 gold or so. Does this effect also apply during the setup phase? The discussion has been around whether a card is "played" or "placed" during setup or not. I can see the argument both for and against on this one.

Thanks

Ps. I tried searching for this topic but not too much luck

Yeah this is a pretty common question that really should be addressed in the core set rules. Anyway, all cards are pretty much treated as if they are blank during set up. The exception being the Limited Keyword and the Set Up Keyword. Everything else is not applicable since the cards are neither played or put into play. So that text doesn't work with the armies.

Another exception being Shadows cards, which still must be placed in Shadows, and be placed so for 2 gold each.

And, in the end, cards are not "played" during setup. The way "played" is defined, it pretty much happens only in Marshaling (unless you're dealing with an event).