Ironman

Around the World in 12 Hours

Planning for The Scarlet Keys Ironman

So you’ve decided to take a trip around the world! A rash of strange disappearances have been taking place all over the world and your contact in London wants you on the case. This year Arkham Con ’26: The Scarlet Con will be hosting The Scarlet Keys Ironman. One world map, one day, no breaks. Do you have the will and stamina to venture out on a globetrotting journey of epic proportions? Or will you succumb to the Outsiders and become a hollow of your former self?

Here we’ll talk about how to plan your deck and coordinate with your team, what to expect on the day of the Ironman game, and perhaps most importantly: how to plan your journey across the world of The Scarlet Keys.

Key Resources
Table of Contents

Part 1: Planning

What Is Ironman?

Ironman is the Mythos Busters tradition of teams of 1–4 players taking on an entire Arkham Horror LCG campaign in one day (à la the famous triathlon event). It has become the focus and highlight of conventions for many players since its inception in 2017. Following Edge of the Earth at BusterCon ’24 and Path to Carcosa last year on the “Return to” track while the Busters were on a break, we’re now back on the main track with The Scarlet Keys.

An Arkham Ironman campaign is a true test of players’ planning, mental, and physical endurance, so you’ll want to plan meticulously in advance.

Signing Up

If you are interested in participating, sign ups are now open! Don’t have a group? We’ll help you find one! Teams will be announced by September 15 so you’ll have plenty of time to coordinate.

Already have a group? Sign up anyway! It helps us organize and we have some fun ways to recognize teams that have participated. Not coming to the con but planning to participate in Ironman remotely with a local group? You, too, should (you guessed it) sign up.

Coming to Arkham Con and don’t want to play Ironman? That’s ok! You won’t be the only one, and there will be plenty of other people to game with on that day.

Planning with Your Team

You can’t take on the Mythos alone, so you’ll need a team. If you have a full or partial group ready to go, that’s great! If you don’t have a team, have no fear. When you sign up to participate, Arkham Con staff will help pair you with other players seeking a group.

When you’ve gotten in touch with your team, it’s time to start coordinating. Figure out your team composition. Which investigator or role does each person want to play? Does anyone have specific deck archetypes in mind? Your team composition is up to you, but it’s generally recommended to have at least one dedicated fighter and one dedicated cluever.

Planning Your Deck

Consider this when choosing your investigator or play style: an Ironman game is an all-day affair with campaigns sometimes lasting as long as 12 hours. Brain burn is a real concern. Sure, you may love to play your 50 card Mandy Thompson deck that involves every search card you can find and has you shuffling your deck multiple times per turn. That’s a blast when you’re playing one or two scenarios, but over a full campaign that’s a lot of shuffling and a lot of slow turns. You can still achieve victory with complex decks, but the toll it takes on you to get there may be too much.

When it comes to Bless and Curse decks, it’s best to coordinate with your team. Adding and subtracting tokens to/from the chaos bag adds complexity for the whole team. Some teams choose to share a single chaos bag around the table, but teams may opt to use individual bags to minimize the downtime in passing the bag back and forth. If you are using multiple chaos bags, making sure each bag is synced up with the appropriate number of Bless and Curse tokens can be a pain.

The most effective decks for a smooth Ironman experience are effective and relatively simple to pilot. Static boosts, high skill values to smash tests, and clue and damage compression will never steer you wrong. Just be sure you have a contingency plan for dealing with enemies if you aren’t playing a dedicated enemy management role.

“Finishing is Winning” has become the unofficial motto of Ironman. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so keep in mind that what’s fun in hour 1 might not be so fun by hour 10 or 12. But also remember, the goal is to have fun, so whatever is most fun for you and your team is great!

Planning for the Event

It’s important to minimize downtime on the day of Ironman. If you’re playing at Arkham Con ’26 this year at the Gamezenter in Roseville, MN, you will be limited to the operating hours of the venue. That puts a hard cap on your time limit and depending on how many scenarios are in the route you choose, that can be a lot to get through with 4 players, so every second counts. You’ll also want to minimize the number of decisions you need to make on the day, as your fatigue grows and making tough decisions gets harder.

To that end, there are a number of things you can do to prepare and create a smoother game on the day:

  • Plan your route. There’s no time for story or flavor text when you’ve got a whole campaign to conquer. On the day of Ironman, you’ll want to dive in right away and progress as quickly as you can. Scarlet Keys is a unique campaign in that it is almost entirely an open world. After the starting scenario in London you will be turned loose to navigate the world however you see fit. Do you want to go for max XP? Do you want to join or overthrow the Red Coterie? Do you want to unlock the elusive “secret scenario”? There are a lot of decisions to make so having a route in mind ahead of time will significantly reduce your setup time and stress on the day. In the following sections we’ll break down how to plan your route and provide some suggested paths.
  • Plan your upgrade path. Decide ahead of time how you want to upgrade your deck and set aside the cards you intend to use. Make some estimates about your expected XP throughout the campaign and determine your early, middle, and late game upgrades. Of course, you may need to pivot depending on how your campaign goes or what weakness you draw (more on that later), but it’s very helpful to have an outline you want to follow.
  • Prep your encounter decks. Scenario setup can take a lot of time, especially if you’re using a single card collection and need to re-use encounter sets between multiple scenarios. With a little bit of prep work and coordination with your team, you can cut this time down significantly. First, plan who will be responsible for the setup of each scenario. For the smoothest experience, each member of your team should pre-build the encounter decks for 2–3 scenarios and be responsible for setup and tear-down; however, people traveling by air to Arkham Con may have limited luggage space so it may not make sense to distribute the responsibility equally across the team.

    We’ve created handy references for what encounter sets are needed to help you decide how to optimally split up the scenarios among your team

What to Expect on Ironman Day

Drawing Your Weakness

At any time before or on the day of Ironman, you may choose to participate in The Drawing of the Weakness ceremony. Typically, drawing your random basic weakness is the last step of your deckbuilding when everything else is set and ready for the game. For the convention, Ironman participants are invited to draw their weaknesses on site. An Arkham Con team member will be available throughout the convention with a full collection of basic weaknesses and each player may opt to draw a card from the deck to discover their fate.

If you accept your drawing, you will add that weakness to your deck (using a copy from your own collection). If you absolutely cannot accept your cursed fortune — the one card that will absolutely cripple your deck or your strategy, you have one opportunity to return the card to the deck and draw again, on two conditions:

  1. You must accept the replacement card no matter what
  2. You must yell as loudly as you can “I am a coward and I reject my fate!” to the cheers and adulation of your fellow players

If you choose to participate, please come prepared to supply your own copy of the weakness card for your deck (or a proxy thereof — a post-it note on top of an unused copy of Knife is perfectly acceptable).

Please note: participation in The Drawing of the Weakness ceremony is completely optional and is just for fun! If you would like to draw your weakness at the convention but don’t feel comfortable doing so in public that’s ok! Just let an Arkham Con team member know and we’ll be more than happy to make accommodations so everyone who wants to has a chance to participate.

Food & Drink

Get a good night’s sleep the night before — it’s gonna be a long day. The morning of Ironman, everyone is excited and itching to get going. Find your team, find a table, and get set up! You’re free to play at your own pace, but if you’re playing at the Gamezenter with the Arkham Con ’26 attendees, keep in mind that the venue has limited hours.

Plan ahead for food and stay hydrated. It’s recommended to bring snacks that you can eat during the game without getting your hands (or the cards and tokens) dirty. Plan with your team whether you want to take a break for meals or eat during the game. Keep it light, you’ll need energy to keep going and you don’t want to be feeling food coma after a meal. Keep a water bottle nearby and refill it often. You will have to take bathroom breaks, but it’s important to keep the brain lubricated to help support your critical thinking and decision making skills.

Be Ready to Play!

Consider your decisions, but keep moving forward. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis or discussing all the possible ways you can deal with whatever horrors the Mythos deals you. Be decisive and respect your teammates’ decisions and the roles they want to play.

Go with the flow. This is Arkham — even if you have a perfect plan, you never know what the Mythos will throw at you or when the autofail will rear its ugly tentacle. Be ready to adapt and adjust your plan. You may need to change your upgrade path to compensate for a new weakness, add more healing, or shift your flex character into a more dedicated fighter or cluever role.

Remember that “finishing is winning.” This is a marathon. Even if your investigator doesn’t survive or you don’t achieve the victory condition you wanted, just getting to the end of the campaign in a single day is a pretty big accomplishment. Above all, remember that the goal is to have fun! Ironman is a challenge and a commitment, but it’s an awesome journey to share with your teammates and will create some amazing memories from your convention!

Part 3: Route Planning

[Beware: the following sections contain spoilers for The Scarlet Keys campaign. If you have not played the campaign before, it is recommended that you experience your blind play before engaging in Ironman.]

You can refer to the Arkham Con ‘26: The Scarlet Keys Ironman Planning sheet here for a complete guide to the decisions and mechanics in the campaign. Scarlet Keys is a unique campaign in that it features an open world map and players may choose their own route through the campaign, completing as many or as few scenarios as they wish before heading to the conclusion of the story. All campaigns will begin in London and end in Tunguska, but where you go and what you do in the time between is up to you. Before we dive into the individual scenarios, let’s look at the big picture. What you want to accomplish in your campaign may determine where you choose to travel.

What is your goal?

In The Scarlet Keys, a mysterious secret society of beings around the world known as the Red Coterie are seeking powerful artifacts known as “Keys” while the Foundation races to stop them. The members of the Red Coterie have a wide range of motives and some may be willing to ally with you against a greater threat while others may see you only as an obstacle in the way of their personal goals. You, as the player, may choose to carry out the Foundation’s objective of thwarting the Red Coterie’s plans or you may choose to ally yourself with the Coterie or even try to destabilize it from within.

The actions your team (“the cell”) takes throughout the campaign will influence the feelings of every member of the Coterie towards you and in the finale you will be “judged” on your actions. At the start of the final scenario in Tunguska, each member of the Coterie will vote on your fate. The outcome of that vote will determine the configuration of the finale and what the end of your story looks like.

There are five options for endings:

  1. The Red Coterie attempts to destroy the cell
  2. The cell joins the Red Coterie
  3. The cell overthrows the Red Coterie
  4. The Red Coterie is destroyed from within
  5. The Red Coterie spares the cell

There are 12 voting members of the Coterie (13 if you opt to play the Standalone scenario Fortune & Folly as a side scenario during your campaign) and the combination of their votes at the Congress of the Keys will determine which ending you get. Their votes can be swayed by thwarting their plans, allying with them, or various other decisions throughout the campaign.

Below are some suggested itineraries to achieve each outcome. These are by no means the only possible paths that can lead to your desired victory, so we encourage you to explore this guide and the accompanying spreadsheets and make your journey your own!

Ending 1: The Red Coterie Attempts to Destroy the Cell
Requirement: The vote is a tie or the Yeas have it.

Ending 2: The Cell Joins the Red Coterie
Requirement: The Nays have it and Thorne, Tuwile, and the Claret Knight all voted Nay

Ending 3: The Cell Overthrows the Red Coterie
Requirement: The Nays have it and La Chica Roja, Ece, and Desi all voted Nay

Ending 4: The Red Coterie is Destroyed From Within
Requirement: 3 or more Coterie members have been hollowed by the Outsiders

Ending 5: The Red Coterie Spares the Cell
Requirement: “The cell knows the true nature of the Coterie”

This last ending can only be obtained by unlocking the “secret scenario” Without a Trace, located in the Bermuda Triangle. Accessing this scenario requires a precise set of movements and circumstances so your route must be planned to prioritize this path.

Part 4: Scenario-by-Scenario Strategy

Check back later this summer for a detailed scenario-by-scenario breakdown to help you plan your Ironman experience!