Ironman and group ironman bingo tiles that actually work. Why standard boards lock out irons, GIM-specific tasks, and how to balance a mixed clan board.
Hand a standard bingo board to an ironman and watch what happens. "Smith 100 rune platebodies" is a week of mining. "Obtain a Bandos chestplate" is fine. "Get 500 sharks" is fine. "Complete 20 herb runs" needs seeds they may not have. And "buy a dragon warhammer" is not a tile at all — it is a locked cell that quietly tells them this event was not built for them.
Ironman and group ironman players are a large and growing share of most clans, and the standard advice — "just add a few skilling tiles" — misses why boards fail them. The problem is not difficulty. Irons are usually more willing to grind than mains. The problem is that most tiles secretly assume a Grand Exchange.
This guide covers what actually breaks, the tile patterns that work, what changes for group ironman specifically, and how to run a board for a mixed clan without either group feeling like an afterthought.
Every tile falls into one of three categories for an ironman, and only the first is safe.
Self-sufficient. The task can be completed entirely through gathering, crafting, or killing. "Catch and cook 500 fish." Works for everyone.
Gated by supplies. The task is doable but requires consumables or gear the iron may not have. "Kill Vorkath 25 times" is genuinely open to an iron with a Dragonfire ward and antifires — and completely shut to one who does not yet have them, in a way that is invisible when you write the tile.
Buyable-only. The task can only be completed by purchasing. "Obtain a Twisted bow." For a main this is a GP check; for an iron it is a lottery ticket with a 1-in-thousands rate.
The second category is where boards go wrong, because it looks fine to whoever wrote it. A main reads "kill Vorkath 25 times" and thinks that's a two-hour tile. For an iron without the prerequisites, it is a two-day tile that starts with a quest and a different grind entirely.
Ask: what does a player need to already own before they can start this? If the answer is anything, and that thing is normally bought, the tile is supply-gated.
Then decide whether that is acceptable. Sometimes it is — a board for an established ironman clan can absolutely assume antifires. The failure is doing it by accident.
Rather than a flat list, here are the shapes that reliably work. Each generates dozens of specific tiles.
Gather-then-process chains. The whole task lives inside the account. "Fletch and string 500 bows from logs you cut." "Mine and smelt 100 bars, then smith them into anything." "Catch, cook and eat 200 of any fish." These are the purest ironman tiles: no external dependency, fully verifiable by XP gain, and satisfying in exactly the way irons play the game.
Kill counts on accessible content. Kill counts never require buying anything beyond supplies the account already sustains. "Kill 100 of your assigned Slayer task." "Reach 250 Wintertodt kills." Countable straight off the hiscores, too, so they need no screenshots at all — see the automatic tracking guide.
Drops from content they already do. "Obtain any Barrows piece." "Get a Slayer helm-tier drop." Drops are ironman-neutral — the rate is the same for everyone, and for irons the drop is the point rather than a shortcut.
Unlocks and milestones. "Unlock a new Slayer master." "Complete an Achievement Diary tier." "Obtain a dragon defender." "Reach 100% favour in a Kourend house." These are pure account progression, which is what an ironman is playing for anyway.
Self-sufficiency showcases. Tiles that are actively better for irons than mains: "Complete a full set of any dragonhide armour from hides you gathered." "Obtain a full Barrows set through kills alone." A main can technically do these but has no reason to enjoy them. Putting two or three on a board flips the usual dynamic and irons love it.
Quests and quest-gated content. Nearly always ironman-safe, and often a genuine unlock rather than a chore.
For a ready-made grid built entirely from these patterns, the board templates page has a complete 25-tile ironman board with points assigned. For raw tiles to mix in, the tile ideas list marks which tasks are self-sufficient.
Group ironman is not just "ironman with friends", and a GIM board that ignores the differences wastes the format's best material.
The group storage is shared. Members can pool resources, which means a GIM group can genuinely divide labour on a tile in a way solo irons cannot. "As a group, produce 1,000 potions" is a real, coordinated task. Lean into it.
Specialisation is the whole appeal. Most groups end up with a designated skiller, a designated PvMer, and someone who does clues. Tiles that reward this — "have three different members each complete a different Achievement Diary" — play to what the group already is.
Group-only content exists. Group storage, group bosses, and shared unlocks are all fair game and appear on no standard board.
Group size varies enormously. A group of two and a group of five are different games. If your clan has both, either normalise per-member or accept the imbalance openly.
The best GIM tiles are the ones that would be trivial for a five-person group of mains and require actual coordination for a group of irons. That gap is where the fun is.
Most clans are not all-iron or all-main. They are both, and the board has to work for both without patronising either.
Four approaches, roughly in order of how well they work:
1. Build the whole board self-sufficient. Every tile is ironman-safe. Mains can still complete everything — usually faster, since they can buy their way to prerequisites — but nobody is locked out. This is the simplest option and the one most clans should pick. The cost is that you lose GP-flex tiles entirely, which is a real but survivable loss.
2. Mixed teams. Put irons and mains on the same teams and let them split tiles. A main handles the buyable tile, the iron handles the gathering chain, and both contribute. This is the best option for social cohesion and the strategies guide covers team balancing in depth.
3. Parallel tiles. Write buyable tiles with an ironman alternative: "Obtain a Dragon Warhammer or 250 Vorkath kills." Everyone gets a path. The cost is that the two branches are rarely equal in effort, and someone will do the maths and complain.
4. Separate boards. An iron board and a main board, scored separately. Cleanest on paper, and it splits your event into two smaller, less exciting events. Only worth it if you have enough of both to fill two leaderboards.
Avoid the fifth option, which clans try constantly: a mostly-main board with three token ironman tiles. Irons notice immediately, and a board that reserves 12% of itself for them reads worse than one that never considered them at all.
Ironman tiles are unusually easy to verify, which is a nice side effect.
Gather-and-process chains and kill counts are countable — they resolve from hiscores XP and KC without a single screenshot. Drops and collection log slots need a plugin or a screenshot. Unlocks are usually screenshot tiles, but they are unambiguous ones.
A well-built ironman board can easily be 60–70% automatically verified, which is higher than a typical mixed board, because irons naturally do things the hiscores already count.
One ironman-specific rule worth publishing: state whether pre-event stock counts. An iron with 2,000 banked yew logs completing "fletch 1,000 yew longbows" in ten minutes is either fine or cheating depending on a rule you have not written yet. The rules and drop verification guide covers prepping rules generally; for iron-heavy boards it matters more, because banked stock is a much larger share of an iron's capability.
One that can be completed entirely within the account: gathering, crafting from gathered materials, kill counts, drops, and unlocks. Anything requiring a Grand Exchange purchase is either impossible or a lottery for an ironman.
The simplest reliable approach is to make every tile self-sufficient — mains can still complete those, usually faster, so nobody is excluded. Mixed teams that split tiles between an iron and a main are the best option socially.
Yes. Group ironman has shared group storage and natural role specialisation, so tiles can require genuine coordination — three members each completing a different diary, or the group pooling materials for one large output. Those tiles are impossible to write for solo irons.
That is your call, but publish it before the event. Banked stock is a far larger share of an ironman's capability than a main's, so an unstated prepping rule causes more disputes on iron-heavy boards than anywhere else.
More of it than usual, yes. Gathering chains and kill counts are recorded on the hiscores and need no screenshots, so a well-built ironman board often reaches 60–70% automatic verification.
Start from the ready-made ironman board template, swap five tiles for whatever your clan is currently obsessed with, and publish the prepping rule alongside it.
If you want the board itself built quickly, the free board generator is browser-based and needs no account. For a live board with teams, screenshot approval and Discord updates, an OSRSHub server is $12.10 a month.