New game mode based on S-Chess

Yesterday I was checking out S-Chess on YT introduced by Yasser. As I was listening the explanation (check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seirawan_chess to understand if you don't know). I thought, "this changes the rules a lot". Spawning a piece after playing seems too unnatural for chess.

After thinking more, I thought, couldn't it just be a game where in the beginning the players choose what piece they would like as their "queen". Basically the king chooses what ally he should bring to battle. So you could only start with the "Queen", "Marshall", or "Chancellor" (or "Hawk" and "Elephant" as Yasser names them).

White would be the first to choose, since they also play first. This would also remove the advantage white has of being the first one to play (black can counterpick).

Let me know what you guys think. I had to post this since this was bugging my mind for some reason.

This variant sounds interesting at first, but there is one key flaw. You are using the assumption that there really is an interesting pick and counter pick strategy. I believe this is not the case. In a nutshell, white should pick the most valuable piece available. Then when black gets to counterpick, but there aren't really any "good" and "bad" matchups, but rather just pieces with different values to choose from. He should also pick the most valuable piece.

In practice the players might not always choose the most valuable piece because they want to have fun or don't know which piece is best, but they will put themselves at a disadvantage from the start.

Also, no matter what you do, it is impossible to remove the first move advantage. You can compensate it, but not remove it.

What you say makes sense, but according to you, what would be the most valuable piece? The queen (rook+bishop)?

Let's make a hypothetical scenario:
- White chooses Queen (rook + bishop).
- Black chooses Elephant (rook + knight).

Here, Elephant and Queen should have the same value (knights have the same value as bishops), but one should be stronger than the other in different openings and tactics. Bishops usually prefer open games, while knights usually fare better in closed positions.

This could be played around with.

Also what you said is true, removing the first move advantage with this sounds a bit much, but maybe compensate a little bit.

I'd like to hear what you think about this.

I go by the piece values provided by @HGMuller.

Queen (R+B)= 9.50

Chancellor (R+N)= 9.00

Archbishop (B+N) = 8.75

Those are results from testing, by an engine playing a lot of games against itself. All 3 pieces are valued within a pawn from each other, so the difference is not huge, but still noticeable.

Of course the value of the pieces depend on the position, but we are making the choice in the initial position and have to make our decision based on that. I don't think the info on what choice white made makes a big difference for black.

For the sake of argument, let's take say white takes queen. Black now have 3 options:

Queen - Black scores 45%

Chancellor - Black scores 38%

Archbishop - Black scores 35%

I made up the numbers above, but if blacks options are similar to this it does not really help to compensate the first move advantage...

I see, that does indeed make things troublesome in this case. I didn't know about the tests that were already performed and I didn't figure it would be so set in stone like that.

Thanks for clearing things up for me Martin0. That was a good insight.