
A player about to finish Head-to-Head
Head-to-Head was an event available during the Gielinor Games, released 24 July 2012. players could access it through the portal in Varrock Square. It's was race with a twist, with each move determined by ability cards. The aim of the game was to complete the race in the shortest amount of cards possible. Agility experience was received upon completion of the race, as well as contribution points. The game could be attempted repeatedly for contribution points, but only a certain amount of agility experience could be gained daily, resetting after 00:00 UTC the next time the player logged in.
The player raced against a werewolf, a human, a goblin, and a gnome. One started with 3 random cards, and gained a random replacement after you've used 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. |
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[]
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 was a glitch where if the player used the players "Taunt" card as the first card played it, made duplicates of all the characters. The duplicate characters stayed at the starting line. Another graphical glitch could be performed when one started the race by clicking one ability card and then clicking the "Return to Varrock Portal." The player then would appear to be running backwards.
- Another glitch caused athletes to be affected by cards even when they should be unaffected. For example, the player may have used a Prayer protection card, which prevented them from being affected by effects for 2 rounds, but in fact they were still affected. Only the player seemed to suffer from this. Another case involved the Dedication card - when an adjacent runner used Taunt, they would not be "Slighted" and could not benefit from "I'll show them!", but they would still only run 1 pace.
- Sometimes the runners are only affected by Long term injury in 1 round.
- Another glitch caused your player to run 1 less space per turn. It was caused after using a card then clicking behind you on the minimap.
- There was 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 was possible to teleport from the racecourse.
- If you finished the race while getting too injured to run, you would get the experience from the race but be stuck there. Players can log out then log back in and you would have been back in Varrock. However, there was a glitch where if you run onto the track then back through the finish line, you would finish the race and get extra EXP and contribution points.
- It was possible to get over 2500 points with a glitch; this was never fixed.
- There was a glitch where if the player had an aura active and it depleted, it allows you to walk the race instead of running it.
- There was a glitch where if the player did an emote and clicks on a card, the NPCs will move but you will stay at the starting line.
- 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 was 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, players would be able to noclip past the boundaries of the race.