Reverse-Chess

Hallo people, I'm really curious what you think about this variant:

You start with an empty board, then White and Black place their king somewhere in their own half. From then, a player can either put a new piece on the board (again, only in their own half), or move one of their pieces.

Otherwise, normal chess rules apply. Pawns can't be placed on a player's first rank, but they can promote and take en passant. Castling is not allowed, because you basically start with manually setting up your castle.

I think it's a fascinating variant, in fact I liked it so much that I've built a single player playground here: https://marayana.dev/

I actually want to create a real two-player game from there. Initially, I thought that White's advantage of having the first move might be too much, but in the games I've played against myself, it often turned out that after you survived the first moves/piece placements, the situation is often balanced. But super sharp.

The only concern I have is that I'm overlooking something, for example that White can in fact force a win. I don't see how, though. But I only discovered chess a couple of years ago, I'm a pretty mediocre player, so I'd really like to hear the opinions of more advanced or even expert players. What do you think?

It is! It also helps me as (sort of) beginner to develop a better understanding of board geometry, you really start thinking about what's the ideal placement for your pieces.

Questions I ask myself for example - is it better (as black) to place my king on the same or the other colour complex than my oppenent's king? At which point is it safe to bring my queen? You can't use her too early, she's just going to be attacked right away, and you'd lose a very precious tempo.

The endgame is also super instructive, because (when I play against myself at least) I often hesitate to bring a pawn instead of a piece, so I ususally have tons of pawns left to place on the board, once the pieces are traded off. Great exercise for pawn endgames.