Its not completely unreasonable that someone migth derive advantage from playing with more familiar setup (assuming one would play this variant enough).
It is very questionable, though, whether in a variant this large where the differences in setup are applied somewhere in the rear of the army, that there will be anything familiar at all to the position by the time the battle really starts. Black can force white to start with (some of his) pieces in a certain constellation, but he cannot control what moves white will play afterwards. Most white players would play totally different, and by the time the pieces in the back-rank come into play you would always be in a position you have never seen before. Unless black is playing against the same white player all the time, which would also stick to the single variation he likes. In which case the position would be just as familiar to that white player, and the alledged compensation would go up in smoke.
It is very questionable, though, whether in a variant this large where the differences in setup are applied somewhere in the rear of the army, that there will be anything familiar at all to the position by the time the battle really starts. Black can force white to start with (some of his) pieces in a certain constellation, but he cannot control what moves white will play afterwards. Most white players would play totally different, and by the time the pieces in the back-rank come into play you would always be in a position you have never seen before. Unless black is playing against the same white player all the time, which would also stick to the single variation he likes. In which case the position would be just as familiar to that white player, and the alledged compensation would go up in smoke.