Jeremy, HG, you ask for evidence that there is no first turn advantage and
all I can offer is empirical evidence and logic. I will cheerfully examine
the first few moves of Chief with either or both of you, and we can all
work on showing a first 2 turns advantage in Chief. I am pretty much
arguing that you cannot even demonstrate a credible 2-move advantage for
white in the original Chieftain. 

I suspect you don't fully appreciate the effects of irreversibility on
pawns, nor the greater room for pieces in Chief. As evidence, HG, you said
this:
"[T]ypically any constellation of opponent pieces can be cracked if you
are given the time to organize your pieces in a constellation needed to
crack it. So a game of chess is a constant race between concentrating your
attack force, and the opponent strengthening the spot against which you
direct that attack. Being allowed to do two quiet moves in a row (which is
what happens when the opponent loses 1 tempo) makes it more likely you will
win that race."

Reversibility and more room means the position you are attacking can be
ceded without any loss of pieces at all. A position doesn't crack as much
as it shatters. And all I can offer for all these claims is empirical
evidence. I invite either or both of you or anyone else interested to push
pieces for a while to actually see why I say what I do. Chief is a very
varied chess variant; it does not at all act like FIDE because it is
structured differently. I see that difference in structure eliminating
first-turn advantage, with the empirical evidence that you cannot show any
effective initial attack, even with a 2-move advantage for white, because
black has too many counters, and gives up only a little territory.

HG, again: "Only in positions where nothing can be achieved no matter what
(i.e. a static defense exists that has no weak spots weak enough to succumb
to even total concentrated attack of all enemy material), a tempo loses its
value. Such fortresses are quite rare."

I submit they are impossible in Chief, unless the player making the
fortress has already "won" the game by accumulating enough extra material
to construct such a fortress. A static fortress can be breached by an
active attack. Chief is designed to be a game of attrition, but is very
unforgiving. If you can get a piece or two up on your opponent, you can
probably force a win. Forting up doesn't work, empirically, in any of the
games. People who tried it lost. The key to Chief is always maintaining the
exchanges so you do not go down in total pieces on the board. An active
attacker can, with maneuver, hit 1 spot with an overwhelming attack which
will leave the attacker a piece or two up, in my experience. Two of the
four non-leader pieces can create forward forks which can/will stymie a
static defense.

The Warlord games are more forgiving. You can get a couple pieces down, and
still win a reasonable amount of the time. At least, now, in their infancy,
you can. But the Warlord games are less susceptible to computer play than
Chief is, I believe. Certainly at the larger sizes, the games are much more
complex in a chess sense than any typical chess variant, even rather large,
complicated ones. They can be complex even in a wargame sense.