What's the most complex/mentally taxing setup?

Which arrangement of heroes, villain, and environment do you think would cause the greatest amount of mental effort to get everything right?

PW Fanatic, Argent Adept, PW Cap Cosmic, Hunted Naturalist, Guise

Conclave of Endlings (Edit: I really like that people brought up the Carnival. I hadn't thought of that since I have not played it myself that much. That could certainly trump Conclave in the "mental tax" department)

Advanced Bloodsworn

Advanced Bloodsworn?

I just played last night:
Guise, TL Tachyon, Argent Adept, Captain Cosmic, Nightmist

versus Advanced La Capitan

in Madame Mittermeier's Fantastical Festival of Conundrums & Curiosities

It was... an interesting time I had. By far the most headache I've had in a game. TL Tachyon funneling everyone cards made everything so much worse. Everything had conditionals.

he would be referring to Kaargra Warfang

Most headache I’ve ever had was Smoke Bombs in Madam Mittermier’s Carnival. Stupid hall of mirrors.

I imagine throwing the Argent Adept, Omnitron-X, Captain Cosmic, and, oh, let’s say Absolute Zero in there with the Wraith would make the game outrageously fiddly. Kaargra Warfang is probably the right choice to make it nigh unplayable.

I tried that Chairman VS Nightwatch in Rook City that the app had for us, just to see if it was possible to win. The computer does a LOT of work for all the stuff that goes on. I am pretty sure the one time I actually won, it is because I forgot something. So still a hollow victory.

Gotcha, Bloodsworn as in Bloodsworn Collesium. I knew it sounded familiar.

The worst I ever personally did... I play solo games, and when the Vengeful Five came out I did a 5 hero match against them.

1 brain, 11 decks, 3 hours. It was a little rough.

Also, early on playing Setback with Kaagra all the tokens to keep track of.

Foote's probably right about that being on of the worst setups though, however, I wonder if there is a vengeance style match that has more triggers and would be a largely pain in the neck.

I mostly agree with Foote's example but I would replace Guise with Setback.  Extra tokens to track and redirection options.  

Smoke Bombs is such a pain to my group, having to check hp totals every time damage is dealt, that we just don't use it even though we know it's a useful card.

Has anyone tried

Legacy, Ra, Haka in Insula Primalis againast Baron Blade?
 

*whistles* 

Vengeance 5 in Omnitron-IV.

Pick your most complex heroes, your brain will melt.

Put Baron Blade on Advanced if you absolutely hate yourself.

I have yet to play Argent Adept without computer assistance; I look forward to the opportunity.

It's funny, I find even using a computer instead of counters, so I can track things like buffs, debuffs and "will attack when hit next", I frequently forget to apply things. Of course, that's just playing by myself...

There was a time when I couldn't play against Spite. There was just too much to remember with all of the drug affects. I'm past that now, but feel similarly towards Kaagara Warfang. If I play against her enough, I'll eventually get the handle of what all those titles do, but for now they are nearly impossible to keep track of. The video game version doesn't help as much as I'd like, as I have trouble figuring out _why_ various effects are occuring. It would be awesome if there was an in-game log that not only listed everything that's happened but explained why it had happened. A lot to ask, perhaps.

So I was going to vote for Kaagara, but, yeah, a five villain V+ game would probably be a lot more taxing. 

Honorable mentions to The Ennead and to Akash'Bhutah, particularly if played with an environment with a lot of targets.

Heroes: The most taxing ones are the ones that give powers and plays to other heroes on their turn, so Argent Adept, Scholar, GI Legacy, Captain Cosmic come to mind. Guise is his own kind of taxing, as one tries to understand just what the effects of his cards are. I'm actually quite unfamiliar with many of the more recent variants, so I can't properly note exactly which variants might be the most taxing for me.

I actually have little problem with Smoke Bombs. It just hasn't been that hard to remember to invoke it or to figure out who is the highest and lowest -- we're constantly having to determine highest and lowest anyway for various damages being dealt. What _has_ been tricky with Smoke Bombs is remembering that it's only villain damage that gets redirected.

I usually don’t have any trouble with them - they are great! - except that that last bit gets even more contorted in the Evil Circus.

Argent Adept, Parse, Setback, The Wraith, and Bunker versus Friction, Baron Blade, Biomancer, Proletariat, and one other (wanna say Ambuscade) in Megalopolis.

Oh, god.  Virtually every had ways of both increasing and reducing damage.  Several also brought redirection.  I've played a lot of Vengeance-style games solo, but this was the one where I had to give up and stop playing since I'd forgotten too many modifiers.