Matthew wrote:So I have to buy the whole thing just to know if I want to play them or not? Come on, if everything else is free, why not make their rules free?
We don't know if the rules for them will be free at one point; right now they seem to exist to push sales (or so
GW believes) for the Age of Sigmar Starter set. It may or may not take sometime. It's entirely possible after a while
GW will put the rules on their website, when they feel the exclusive effect (which were used for a good number of
GW exclusive web bundles for
40K) has worn off.
As for why the other army rules are available -- the best guess I've heard so far is that since
AoS doesn't have High Elves, Dark Elves, Empire, Bretonia, Orcs and such and such, instead are renamed something else, the current army warscrolls are not the ones they intended for the game, but are instead placeholders before full updates can be made. Make sense to me as quite a few named characters are dead in the End Times but are still in the warscrolls. When the Stormcast Eternal and Khorne Blood Warriors rules become available outside the box, it will be released as part of their respected army warscrolls.