Gielinor Games/Head-to-Head

Gielinor Games/Head-to-Head was discontinued from RuneScape after an update.

A player about to finish Head-to-Head

Head-to-Head is an event available during the Gielinor Games, released 24 July 2012. One may access it through the portal in Varrock Square. It's a race with a twist, with each move determined by ability cards. The aim of the game is to complete the race in the shortest amount of cards possible. Agility experience is received upon completion of the race, as well as contribution points. The game can be attempted repeatedly for contribution points, but only a certain amount of agility experience can be gained daily, resetting after 00:00 UTC the next time the player logs in.

The player races against a werewolf, a human, a goblin, and a gnome. One starts with 3 random cards, and gain a random replacement after you use one each turn.

A card will be one of six colours, each colour affects different opponents.

Card colour	Affects
Red	Red runner (Goblin)
Blue	Blue runner (Human)
Green	Green runner (Gnome)
Gold	Gold runner (Werewolf)
Black	The player
Silver	Applies to everyone who fulfils any stated conditions on the card.

Altogether there are 90 abilities available, but duplicate cards occur, and you can only play one card per turn. Hover over each card to see what effect it has.

Head-to-head race finish.

If the player and other athlete(s) reach the finish line in the same move, the player wins.

As the amount of points received is based purely on how few turns it takes to cross the finish line, there is sometimes a tactical advantage to the player allowing themselves and the other runners to fall behind their neighbours by one step. There are a number of cards which allow one or all runners to advance an extra step if they are exactly one step behind one of their neighbours, and careful planning with a little luck can allow the player to pull themselves forwards a couple of extra spaces.

If your aim is to finish a race in first place, a tactic that can be used is to get as many of your opponents "struggling" as you can. Then if the "Cramp" ability is used twice, it removes them from the race and lowers the amount competitors you need to beat. However, this may not be practical as Cramp is too rare. A rare combination that gets all opponents struggling simultaneously is a starting play of the card that advances the player by 3 steps, followed by the card that advances all players who are in last place at the cost of gaining a level of struggling.

If an athlete is removed from the game, cards of that colour still appear. Cards that affect their adjacent opponents, like Stepping stone, still take effect.

Conditions

This section is a stub. Please help expand it.
Here are the conditions all runners may receive during the race:

• Strained
• Slighted
• Focused
• Struggling (Mildly, Severely & Removal)
• Demotivated
• Injured
• Sprinting
• Exhausted

Trivia

A Head-to-Head race is interrupted by a Troll "Streaker", wearing a pink tu-tu, strap-on udders, a propeller beanie, and carrying a teddy bear.

• When the player loses, they do a unique emote which involves kicking at the air and slapping a hand onto their face.
• There is currently a glitch where if the player uses the players "Taunt" card as the first card played it makes duplicates of all the characters. The duplicate characters stay at the starting line. Another graphical glitch can be performed when one starts the race by clicking one ability card and then clicking the "Return to Varrock Portal." The player appears to be running backwards.
• Another glitch causes athletes to be affected by cards even when they should be unaffected. For example, the player may use a Prayer protection card, which prevents them from being affected by effects for 2 rounds, but in fact they are still affected. Only the player seems to suffer from this. Another case involves the Dedication card - when an adjacent runner uses Taunt, they will not be "Slighted" and cannot benefit from "I'll show them!", but they still only run 1 pace.
• Sometimes the runners are only affected by Long term injury in 1 round.
• Another glitch causes your player to run 1 less space per turn. It is caused after using a card then clicking behind you on the minimap.
• There's a card called "Arrow to the Knee" which is a reference to a Skyrim meme.
• A card called "Greed for Speed" is a reference to the game "Need for Speed".
• It is possible to teleport from the racecourse.
• If you finish the race while getting too injured to run, you will get the experience from the race but be stuck there. Players can log out then log back in and you will be back in Varrock. However there is a glitch where if you run onto the track then back through the finish line you will finish the race and get extra exp and contribution points.
• It is possible to get over 2500 points with a glitch, this has not been fixed by Jagex.
• There is a glitch where if the player has an aura active and it depletes it allows you to walk the race instead of running it.
• There is a glitch where if the player does an emote and clicks on a card the NPCs will move but you will stay at the starting line far behind as you will not catch up.
• There's a glitch that if you give yourself 3 struggling conditions and are about 4 squares away from the finish line, you'll trip and fall towards the finish line and win. This glitch has now been patched.
• It is possible to be the only one running in the race by giving everyone 3 struggling condition cards. It's not known whether it's a glitch or it's intended to be that way.
• This is the most popular event of the Gielinor Games due to the high agility experience gained.
• There is currently a glitch where if players got to the end of the race with the severe struggling condition and then activated another level of the condition while going over the crossing line, this allowed players to run outside the normal boundaries of the race. Strangely if this glitch was used players could look over the plateau on which the race sits and see the Dominion Tower far below.