Patchwork is a great game for competitive play.
However some initial random setups offer an "insurmountable" advantage between skilled players (let's say 600+).
This is an issue on Arena: losses to strong but not top10 players could decide who wins the season.
My suggestion would be an open bid in turns for the starting order; e.g. Player1: "zero" ; Player2: "one"; Player1: "three"; Player2: "pass".
The winning bidder (P1 in this case) can chose who starts. At the end of the game, the highest bid (three in this case) is subtracted from the points of the highest bidder.
This was mostly thought as an house rule, but on the MSO discord last year, one of the strongest all-around players agreed with it.
A couple of weeks ago, in a post on another forum, one of the top players on this site also seemed to like the idea.
So i decided to propose it officially.
I understand it is easier said than done, as we would have to get the agreement of the designer and publisher and also have a developer do an implementation.
However I think it would really elevate the game
However some initial random setups offer an "insurmountable" advantage between skilled players (let's say 600+).
This is an issue on Arena: losses to strong but not top10 players could decide who wins the season.
My suggestion would be an open bid in turns for the starting order; e.g. Player1: "zero" ; Player2: "one"; Player1: "three"; Player2: "pass".
The winning bidder (P1 in this case) can chose who starts. At the end of the game, the highest bid (three in this case) is subtracted from the points of the highest bidder.
This was mostly thought as an house rule, but on the MSO discord last year, one of the strongest all-around players agreed with it.
A couple of weeks ago, in a post on another forum, one of the top players on this site also seemed to like the idea.
So i decided to propose it officially.
I understand it is easier said than done, as we would have to get the agreement of the designer and publisher and also have a developer do an implementation.
However I think it would really elevate the game