> I didn't like the idea of a queen on one board capturing the king on another board as her first move
If you did want to experiment with supporting cross-board captures, an alternate way to address that could be by rotating the board 180° every other row, so that white pieces have other white pieces behind their home rank.
If you did want to experiment with supporting cross-board captures, an alternate way to address that could be by rotating the board 180° every other row, so that white pieces have other white pieces behind their home rank.