Currently, when you destroy the tiles, the remaining tiles always fall down & new tiles always appear from the top. With this format, matching the blocks on the bottom will usually be more advantageous then matching the blocks on the top because destroying the blocks on the bottom would allow more blocks above it to fall, thus giving a higher chance of a cascade. Even countdown tiles, are usually place on the bottom row because the new blocks that come in would rarely be able to reach the bottom before the countdown tiles expires. So the top half of the board is pretty much plan D, instead of plan A, B, or C.
I propose instead of dropping new tiles from the top, we do something different from all of the other tile-matching based puzzle games:
When the team on the left (the player) destroys the tiles, new tiles appear from the left & pushes the remaining tiles to the right.
When the team on the right (the AI) destroys the tiles, new tiles appear on the right & pushes the remaining tiles to the left.
This way the game feels more like a real battle, with both teams trying to push blocks towards the other side & even the countdown tiles will unpredictably get shuffled left & right almost like a tag-a-war. Hell, we can even add negative tiles, that will do damage to whatever team it reaches.
I think this would be worth experimenting with, if not as the default format, than at least as an alternative format for special events.
So what do you guys think?