Commander Pairings

Quick answers

Is Iron Realms free to play?

Yes. Iron Realms is free to play in any browser with no download and no account required. Every building, troop tier and Seat of Power is reachable without spending money — purchases buy speed and cosmetics, never a higher ceiling.

Does spending money make you stronger in Iron Realms?

No. Nothing purchasable raises your power ceiling. A charter audit runs on every build and fails it if any offer would sell power. During the pre-alpha nothing is for sale at all — better than that, the store gives its goods away: everything in it is free to take, once a day per item, while the realm is being built. When payments do open, spending will compress time only: it clears timers, it never raises the summit.

How long does it take to max a keep in Iron Realms?

Keeps cap at level 45 and troops at tier 13 — the same summit for everyone, and it is a campaign: about seven months of steady play at half an hour a day, counting keep 45 and the nineteen plots that gate it. The Fair Play ledger inside the game reads that figure straight out of the shipped constants, so it is never a month behind the build.

A commander alone is a stat stick. Placed well — a second one on the march, the right role in the right office — they pay bonuses you can add up on the screen. Here is exactly what the council rewards, and what it does not.

March pairs

Lead and secondary commanders combine their star skills. Pair a raw-attack lead with a secondary whose skills cover its weakness — a burst attacker with a sustain or defense-shred partner, for instance. Match the pair's troop affinity to the army you are marching.

What the council actually rewards

The council seats up to four commanders across four themed offices — Lord Marshal (warlord), Castellan of the Keep (castellan), Master of the Hunt (ranger) and Grand Maester (maester). Seating a commander in the office that matches their role grants a +15% office-match bonus.

Note "up to". You seat one at the start; seats two, three and four open at Keep 6, 14 and 22. For the whole of your first week you are choosing which single office matters most, which makes the office-match bonus below more decisive, not less.

That single number should decide most of your seating. A legendary commander in the wrong office is frequently worse than an epic one in the right office, and the mistake is easy to make because the legendary shows the bigger raw number on its card.

Star skills are also gated by rarity: rare commanders get 1, epics 2, legendaries 3. Commanders cap at level 30 and 5 stars, and a drill pays 120 XP.

Drills are the constraint, and they are the reason to pair rather than collect: your whole roster gets twelve drills a day, priced at 500 × (1 + level/4) food and 300 × (1 + level/4) iron each, so XP is the scarcest thing in commander progression and it does not scale with how many commanders you own. Expeditions are the way around it — a rider earns 400 XP for completing one and it costs no drills.

Watch the featured rotation too — the featured commander carries a 25% discount. Against the recruit prices (400 rare / 900 epic / 1,800 legendary renown) that is 100, 225 or 450 renown saved, which is the cheapest route to the stars that actually unlock those skills.

There is no set bonus. No arrangement of offices lights up a hidden perk, and no combination of commanders rewards you for collecting the pair — if you have been reading the council screen looking for the requirements, there are none to find. The council pays two things and offers a third.

It pays the office match above, and it pays +1 march slot for a ranger seated anywhere on the council — any office, and a second ranger adds nothing. That one is a utility unlock rather than a stacking bonus, which is why it does not double.

What it offers is arithmetic. The panel scores every legal seating of your bench and recommends one, weighting each bonus stat by the buildings you have actually levelled: a gathering specialist is worth very little on a keep with no fields yet, however well their role fits the chair. Each recommended pick names the single stat carrying it, so you can check the reasoning rather than trust it. Where two seatings tie, it leans toward the one with a ranger in it — for the march slot, and by a deliberately small margin, so it never talks you out of a clear stat win to chase the slot.

One caution the screen states outright: a commander seated on the council is not leading a march, and picking a seated commander for a different office empties the one they were in.

Loadout presets

Save combined presets — gear, march, and council in one — for each activity (gathering, raiding, defending, rallying) so you swap your whole setup in one tap instead of fumbling mid-war.