I am a little concerned that I have been cheating with these location. The free cities location

(pentos, myr, norvos, etc). I was reading the effect and I'm not sure how they work. If the first out of house stark card I play is lowered by one does that mean I have to be playing the stark house card and marshal a baratheon character, or any card without the stark affiliation is lowered by one, or is it something completely different?

An out of house card is one that is not neutral and does not match your houses affiliation.

In this case, an out of house Stark card is a Stark card that does not match your houses affiliation. So, as long as your not running House Stark, you can reduce the cost of your first House Stark card by 1 each round.

Does that make sense?

...

And to help elaborate a little more, I will provide this scenario.

You have House Baratheon.

You have Eddard Stark in your hand.

You have Brienne of Tarth(Both Baratheon and Stark affiliation) in your hand.

You have Braavos in play.

If Eddard Stark is the first Stark card you play this round, the cost to play him will be reduced by 1 because his house affiliation does not match your house card because he is Stark and your house card is Baratheon.

If Brienne of Tarth is the first Stark card you play this round, her cost is not reduced by 1 because she has a house affiliation that matches your house card(Baratheon).

If you would pay the out of house gold penalty for a card, it is considered out of house for all intents and purposes.

Thanks that makes perfect sense and now I know that I have been cheating

Brienne's cost would get reduced by the other half of Braavos' text, if she is the first Lady character you play this turn, though.

Brienne's cost would get reduced by the other half of Braavos' text, if she is the first Lady character you play this turn, though.

Yes this is true. I was just trying to explain the OOH portion of it though...

I get the impression you think I contradicted you, which is not the case (if I wanted to contradict you, I'd be quite explicit about it).

Now I'll add something to your scenario with Brienne and Eddard: if you play Brienne, then Eddard, Eddard's cost is reduced by the first half of Braavos' text because he is the first card you play that is both out-of-house and Stark.

Nah that wasn't the case at all!!