One thing I miss from the original puzzle quest was controllable ways to interact with the gem board through spells. You had spells like “select a row of gems to destroy”. This made the gem matching game more strategic as you could look for ways to set yourself up for a five match or to block your opponent from getting a good match. This really added to the enjoyment of the gem matching portion.
I know we do have cards that change gems but there is no decision making process or control over how they change the gems. So it never adds to strategic play in the gem matching game.
A couple of cards for each color with these kind of abilities (and not just “change 3 random gems to green”) would be great. Red/black could have targeted gem removal, white/green targeted gem changing and blue targeted gem position swapping. Or probably even better would be to have planeswalker abilities along these lines. Definitely better than some block specific ability like energizing random gems.
I think it’s a missed opportunity here and something we’ll never get if MtG paper cards are just translated more literally without keeping in mind that they could add to the depth of the gem matching game.