Each game starts out with a one-time setup action. Start by drawing seven cards. If the cards aren't to your liking, you can mulligan once: put your hand back into your deck, re-shuffle, and draw seven new cards.

Here are your seven cards (click on them to see a bigger version):

This is actually a pretty good hand - a nice distribution of characters and cost-reducers - so we'll keep it.

Next, you can play up to 5 gold worth of characters and locations. The gold cost for each card is the value in the gold circle in the upper-left of the card. Routing the Charge has no gold cost because it is an event, and played in different circumstances - we'll see an example later.

Let's choose to play Eddard Stark, House Umber Recruiter, and one The Roseroad. We can only play one The Roseroad, even though both have a zero cost. Why? Because the card text says that it is Limited. Limited means that you can only play one per turn, including during the initial setup.

Crested Wolf Shield is a 1-cost attachment. Can you play that on Eddard Stark instead of deploying a House Umber Recruiter? The answer is no: attachments cannot be played during setup (with one exception - attachments that have the Setup keyword).

Here's what the board looks like after both you and Jaime deploy:

Each player deploys 5-gold worth of characters and locations

Take a quick look at the Lannister cards. They don't seem too threatening, although there are a lot of + Gold cards. You'll also see that his Fallow Fields has a 2 on a scroll: that's 2 influence.

Finally, draw back up to seven cards. Since you played three cards, draw three cards from the top of your deck. Here's your hand now:

Time to get on to the actual game!