I was going to discuss that variant in the wikibook thingy, before i fell off the face of c4topia. Some day, i do intend to finish the wiki page. But I won't be returning to c4 for probably 5 months at the earliest. I say 50% chance i return in 5 months, 50% chance 2-3 years.
Not that you need me for this purpose, ofc. Any variant can be analyzed the same way as regular c4: by using the area of the board, and distinguishing between the types of threats there are (distinguishing them by the # of spaces they reserve for the zugzwang situation).
For instance, in regular c4, it can be shown that there are 2 types of threats: even and odd, distinguished by the fact that an even threat sets up a zugzwang position in which there the # remaining spaces is even (for instance, if there's a threat in the 4th row, then at the end of the game there will be 4 spaces left when zugzwang occurs). Whereas an odd threat causes a zugzwang in which the # spaces is odd. Once we see this, the next step is to look at the area of the board: 42, which is even, therefore 1st player moves when # spaces is even. So when zugzwang position has even # spaces, 1st player loses. We said that that position is caused by an even threat, therefore it's clear that the first player is beaten by an even threat.
That's the general method and you'll see that it works for any variant, even crazy ones like Chess Knight, or Four-Way Gravity.
