Board Game Arena

Love this idea. It works really well in Great Western Trail, which similarly can have some imbalanced starting player setups. So there's already prior implementation art at BGA for this type of thing. Would be great to see it in Patchwork too!

This rule itself is not that hard to add, but all house rules need the publisher's approval to be implemented.
So, you should bring this to the publisher instead.

Ah I see, that makes sense. I sent the publisher an email; hope they respond! I see they also publish Great Western Trail, which has this variant, so there's some hope!