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Can models outside of a challenge allocate wounds into it if all other opponents are dead (or there are no other opponents to begin with)?

In a game last night I had a unit of warp talons and a chaos lord in combat with a chapter master and a tactical squad. My aspiring champion was fighting the CM in a challenge and the chaos lord killed the last of the tacticals before the warp talons attacked.

So could the rest of the warp talons have attacked the chapter master fighting the challenge with my champion?

I know that challenge wounds overspill onto the unit, so does it work the other way around as well?

Yes. Explicitly covered in the rules.

The problem my opponent and I had was that it says wounds carried over go into the challenge.

I said that wounds cannot be generated without hits meaning that my guys could attack into the challenge but he argued this saying it says wounds not attacks are carried over so my warp talons would be uselessly hacking at the dead corpses of the tactical squad.

In the end we rolled a d6 for it (I lost the roll off) and we are trying to find an official answer.

The warp talons are locked in combat, they are engaged in combat. Thus they meet the requirements of "who can attack".

Outside forces rule iirc says can allocate wound into the challenge after al other combatants are dead. So as I read it they can attack in once all his buds are dead. Even if they are not there. No more hiding in challenges to avoid being shot. There's a greater chance to die.

The rule even covers no enemy models when it says "(if any)".