Wouldn’t it be fun if you could play this game against your friends? We already can fight 3 versus 3 against the computer, and I believe the possibility for 2 players battling against each other seems possible. The player with at least 1 character left standing wins. If all characters of both teams have been defeated, it’s a draw.
Both players can set up their team of 3 characters, of course what is available from your roster. Once selected, both players take turns on the board to match tiles. First character 1 of player 1 can perform a move, then character 1 of player 2. This repeats over all characters. Players can strategically set up combos for themselves, and hinder the opponent. Character abilities and passives are also active, but perhaps at a reduced power rate, in order to avoid quick battles (e.g. Gunters “Wenk!” killing the entire enemy team in 1 move). A characters ability bar will only fill during their turn, not during the enemies turn. This gives the player the opportunity to go for either damage or charging their abilities.
Status effects can be colored differently for both players, to distinguish the effects on both teams (e.g. green poison for player 1 and red poison for player 2). Perhaps special tiles can be used such as attack power tiles, heal tiles and such to make it an even more exciting battle. Both players can destroy all status effects, even the ones of the enemy. This means that a more powerful attack destroying more tiles would mean a higher chance for the enemy to be cured of status effects, in order to keep it balanced.
Local versus could be locked until a player managed to get 6 characters, but it may also be open as soon as the tutorial is completed.
Even better would be online versus against other players online with similar gameplay and could also introduce a ranked system with rewards. Again the player would have to complete at least the tutorial before he can access this.