It's not quite a static, defined variant, but rather an interesting, chaotic method to setup a game with an odd (non-seven) number of players. As the OP pointed out, it's suitable for any number from 2 to 34. Although at higher numbers, some people might not get to play.
For casual face-to-face games, where you might want to get as many players involved as possible, I would suggest the following amendments:
After the SC selection phase (for the players who won bids), the remaining SCs are randomly distributed to players who did not win any bids.
One way to do the second SC distribution is to randomly choose one neutral SC for each remaining player. That way, the players who won bids would have 1 to 3 SCs, and the players that did not win bids would only get one SC (or zero, if the neutral SCs run out).
You could also choose to set aside a number of randomly chosen neutral SCs that no one gets to start off with, but that limits the number of players that can get involved. If you don't set aside any, then you are guaranteed to get at least 12 (very likely more) players involved in the game.
The Gobbledydook Expatriates
this time!
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