Sigmar, Smite This Starter Set!

I really dig the Soulbound hardcover rulebook, but I'm quickly becoming disappointed by the Starter Set for this Warhammer Age of Sigmar (I still think they need a colon there) tabletop roleplaying game. In a well intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to teach new players the rules of the game in a piecemeal fashion, the end result is a confusing hodgepodge that leaves me with more questions than answers on every page. The worst part is that there's a showstopper of a problem in the very first combat encounter. 

So, I'm asking myself, do these fyrehunter critters really destroy the characters' armor during the first battle? Like, permanently destroy it? Yes, and yes. Maybe I'm just having flashbacks to the dreaded rust monster from D&D days of yore, but I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the game designers' decision to gank the party right from the get-go. I mean, I get that the setting is intended to be more harsh than a typical D&D campaign, but what do you say to players when you hamstring their characters before they have any idea of what's happening?

LOL grimdark, amirite?!

Here's how it goes down. In that first combat encounter, the party faces no fewer than four fyrehunters. The book indicates that these creatures use their armor-destroying attack on the second round of combat (and the monsters are too tough to one-shot during the first round). Their attack has the Rend trait, and in Soulbound it means that for every unmodified roll of 6 on a D6, the attack permanently reduces the defender's Armor rating by one. The fyrehunters roll 4D6 for that attack, and the odds of rolling at least one 6 on 4D6 is 52%. Most of the pre-generated characters in the Starter Set have an Armor rating of 1 or 2, so even a single 6 is a crippling blow to their defenses. Although the full rulebook provides rules for repairing armor and prices for purchasing new armor, the Starter Set includes none of this information. A character whose armor is destroyed during this first encounter is stuck for the rest of the adventure. If I ever play this system with the boys, you'd better believe I'm houseruling that Rend trait!