T[h]ink(er)ing much?

So far, I sort-of ignored the need to sort out initial positions of figures, for all variants. You see, problem is that there are several figures which can "jump" over single rank of Pawns, and then merrily gallop towards opponent's positions, and even capture some pieces.

I'm an okay with opponents having each other at the threat of imminent attack from the very start of a game. Issue I'm having here is that it might be possible for a player to mount increasing pressure onto opponent from the very beginning, to which there is no proper, stopping defense, which ultimately leads to a certain victory.

In fact, as it is right now, One variant is broken. All light player has to do is move Queen's Shaman towards opponent's King as much as possible, and dark King is checkmated. In previous variants at least dark Centaur on King's side was positioned on a light field, and so could capture light Shaman in the very next move. In One variant, since it grew compared to previous variants, it's located on a dark field and so its' first step is short, like an ordinary Knight, and so light Shaman is out of reach. All the other dark pieces can't neither capture nor block light Shaman, hence checkmate.

Worse yet, in odd variants "jumping" figures from the initial positions actually do target opponent's figures, not just Pawns, from very early variants, e.g. Pegasus in Odd Croatian Ties. In later odd variants, some of figures are not even defended, and so could be captured early on, without much of a hindrance. Only saving grace is that the other player can do the same. But this does not constitute what I would deem as an intelligent play, or an intelligent game design.

Worse of all, I'm not exactly sure how to stop that. Sure, I was thinking about adding second row of Pawns, that'll solve a lot of issues with pieces featuring short jumps (Pegasus, light Shamans, the same field color Centaurs). Still, that leaves us with long jump figures (the opposite field color Centaurs, dark Shamans). These could be blocked with a few Pawns carefully positioned onto their initial step-fields. But then initial setup would look ungainly, if not downright ugly. Another possible, and far worse problem would be if those blocking Pawns are too efficient, dragging opening stage far too long before anyone could actually start to play a game.

I'll try to see if just shuffling figures around will solve the issues. If not, there will be a massive changes to initial setups, rush, en-passant rules, maybe some more. In short, I'll have to do a lot of (thinking and) tinkering, before being productive again.