I had an interesting situation arise on the weekend where a two pack of sallies with only 3 handlers remaining took 6 wounds from a breath weapon in close combat. All but one of the wounds were randomized onto the skink handlers. In terms of combat resolution, how many wounds should have been counted? Should it have been the 6 inflicted or only 4 since the "excess" wounds randomized did not do anything to the unit. Excess wounds inflicted on a model outside of a challenge do not usually count but this was a rather strange situation.
Any wounds that are taken by the handlers are consider ward saves. So, any handler wounds are lost as far as combat rez goes.
Arli, I don't suppose you could point out some supporting rulebook/FAQ text about that being a ward save? I guess it kind of plays out similar to a save, but I haven't seen anything that indicates it actually is one for rule purposes. In the event that a monster/handler unit has an actual ward save (think EoTG bubble), you would get to take the save before allocating any wounds to the handlers. If randomizing the wound was a ward save, it would then be possible to make two different wards against one wound- which you can't do. I play it that handlers removed count as wounds for combat- the enemy did score a wound after all, which got past any saves you may have had. It just happened to be transferred to something else, where in the case of an armor/regen/ward save, the wound never happened at all. As far as the excess wounds, I would discount them, since the wounds are all being inflicted simultaneously. It'd be like when a hero on a monster gets shot up, and all shots randomize onto the rider. The rider is just extra dead; the additional wounds don't transfer onto the monster.
In our gamig club, we looked at the rules for the salamander and drew that conclusion. Part of our reasoning was that the salamander does not test on the loss of handlers until they are all gone. We may have even rolled for it.
The way I see it is this: Outside of a challenge, you can't cause "bonus" combat res by killing some models that are already dead. I wouldn't consider it a "ward save" in the sense that certain spells/items can force you to re-roll ward saves. I think the only reason it's different in a chalenge is because the challenge is like the center of attention and seeing the strongest man in your regiment get beaten down "tends to demoralise the other men". So no combat res for killing dead skinks.