Gambit asks you to gamble on what’s on top of the encounter deck, as he can range from embarrassingly bad to extremely powerful. A 2/2 is where you want him to be satisfied with the value. If there are 10 cards with 2 boost icons in a 30 card encounter deck, you’re about 70% to hit one of them. Not perfect, but consider that if you miss and only get 1 boost icon, you still got some value from seeing the top of the encounter deck, and you know exactly what the next boost and/or encounter card will be to plan accordingly. In particular, that boost card will only have 0 or 1 icons, enabling a safe flip to Alter-Ego or taking an attack without wasting a block. Then there’s the upside of sometimes hitting a 3-icon card! Not the most consistent ally, but a fun one for sure who should at least pull his weight in most cases, especially when the X-Men trait is relevant.

Question, after you see the 3 encounter cards and pick one to tuck, what do you do with the other two cards? Those go back to the encounter deck or to the discard pile?

That aside is also a good card to deal with inconvenient cards, like a nasty treachery regardless of the amount of boost icons.

This has a nice synergy with Global Logistics, which lets you check the encounter deck before bringing Gambit into play.

Effectiveness aside, it's just good fun when you get to steal Universal Weapon :)