Intriguing chess variant! It was hard for me to get used to the fact that rooks and bishops had limited range.
Some differences I noticed from regular chess:
- Rook + knight + king vs. rook + king seems to be a win because the board is small enough that the rook gets trapped by the superior side. The majority of my wins were achieved by getting to this endgame.
- I think the pawn is actually the strongest piece in the game. In the opening I like to make 2 consecutive pawn moves from (b1->c2->b3), from the b3 square it just paralyzes all of the opponent's pieces. Also the knight is a lot for powerful in this variant since its range is actually similar to the other pieces. My subjective ranking would probably be Pawn -> King -> Knight/Rook -> Bishop.
- It seems like the bishop is fairly useless, since it starts in the corner and as soon as you move it out the opponent can trade it off right away. So a lot of games felt like each side was starting with 4 pieces instead of 5.
- I haven't tried all the endgames but I think it should be possible to checkmate with King + pawn vs. King.
- I liked having rooks facing off on the same file (4 squares apart) as a deterrence strategy. This wouldn't be possible in regular chess.
- King safety's not really a thing because all the pieces (except for the pawn) are relatively weak compared to the king.
My suggestion would be to have a different starting configuration so that the bishops can be used more.