Ironman
An Ironman is similar to a crew battle, but it is between two people instead of two groups. It is an idea of g-regulate on SmashBoards based on Overswarm's idea.
Procedure
Both players pick 5 different characters. Each character starts with 4 stocks, for a total of 20 stocks. They then pick their opening characters before the battle. They start on a random neutral stage, but they can agree on the opening stage.
When a player loses all of their character's stock, they pick another character and counter-pick a legal stage. Each player starts the battle with their remaining stock, and therefore self destructs to match their previous stocks from the last game. If a player loses their 20 stocks, they lose the match.
Full Roster Ironman
This type of Ironman is functionally similar to a normal Ironman, but involves the full roster instead of 5 characters and 20 stocks. It is usually done as a side-event at many tourneys, one of the most famous instances being Mango and Mew2King's full roster Ironman at Smash the Record. While both players do go through the entire roster, one player will start at the beginning of the roster, from left to right and top to bottom, while the other will start from the ending of the roster, from right to left, bottom to top. Once one player loses all of their characters, they lose the entire set.
In Brawl and Smash 4
While it would be possible for the Ironman Challenge to take place in both of these titles, due to the roster sizes of both of them, tournaments will often decline Ironman for these games. This would be especially prominent in Smash 4, as the game itself consists of 58 characters, and some regions have 2 or 3 stocks, leading into scenarios of 116 to 174 total stocks, which is the equivalent to a small tournament.
