Gambit… Man oh man, have I been looking forward to the Creole charmer, the Ragin’ Cajun, the Horseman of Death himself joining the ranks in Marvel Champions. As a child of the 90’s whose first exposure to the X-Men was the animated series, he’s always been a favourite, and we’ve been anticipating his arrival ever since they finally announced that X-Men were coming to the game. Remy has not disappointed us so far, delivering an interesting new playstyle, powerful cards, and an absolute metric ton of damage in the process.
In this article, we’re going to do our usual thing and run down his strengths, weaknesses, and deck options. Let’s get into it.
Gambit’s Strengths
- Multiple ways to Thwart and generally remove threat in Alter-Ego
- Massive damage spikes when needed that cannot be stopped by Tough
- Fantastic inherent survivability
Gambit is an extremely interesting all-rounder that excels in just about every area. He’s got two main mechanics that define him as a character, and those in turn reinforce each other to cover his own weaknesses. I’m going to spend a while gushing about them, because honestly, Gambit is incredible and I love playing him. Expect a ton more Gambit content soon. The first biggest area of Remy’s power comes from his alter-ego utility. For most characters, Alter-Ego represents a break in you being able to meaningfully participate in the game. You blow your resources in Hero form, and then flip to Alter-Ego just to do things like draw cards, set up, hide from big damage swings, and generally stop directly impacting the board state.
With Remy LeBeau’s Thief Extraordinaire ability, you get to not only remove threat from the board by removing threat from a scheme, you get to essentially pick what the Villain’s next encounter card will be. Powerful boost effect? Discard that instead of thwarting. Villain’s about to scheme? Make sure he takes that 0-icon boost card instead. The Thieves’ Guild ensures that ability always effectively removes an extra threat, as well as giving you the ability to potentially draw a card if you stack up your thwarting abilities properly. This alone would be enough to make him powerful in Alter-Ego, but it just doesn’t stop.
As a Thief, Remy can play a new Justice card that comes in his pack which may be one of the best Thwart events ever printed – Breaking and Entering. Controlling threat from Alter-Ego is incredibly powerful, and as an Action rather than a Hero Action or Alter-Ego Action, you can use it no matter your form. And it still doesn’t stop. Sure, that’s a Justice card, anyone can do that now if they’re a Thief or Spy (Black Widow just got a LOT stronger!), but he himself comes with 2 copies of an even better Alter-Ego thwarting option, Creole Charmer. This one’s Alter-Ego only, but if you set it up first, you can throw in an extra confuse on the villain to essentially completely offset the fact you’re ending your turn in Alter-Ego. And this is emblematic of Gambit’s kit – every inherent weakness of his Alter-Ego heavy playstyle is offset by another piece.

That’s all very well and good, but what about damage? The game doesn’t end through thwarting, after all. That’s where the other half of Gambit’s kit comes in. Gambit excels at high bursts of damage from high-cost damaging events, like those from his own kit that will allow you to blow up threats on the board when you’re not dealing with threat.
Royal Flush and Charged Card are the burst cards in question, and they allow you to deal damage when you want to deal damage. Every turn you’re in Hero form (which is every turn, because you can and should almost constantly flip between Hero and Alter-ego!), you can add a charge counter to Gambit thanks to Charge de Card. When you’re ready to blow something up, you can burn up to 3 counters with Throw de Card to add up to 3 damage to an attack event. This means that in reality, Royal Flush is going to be able to deal 9 damage spread around however you like whenever you play it, because you’re unlikely to play it otherwise unless you absolutely have to. Charged Card gains additional effects based on the charge counters spent, and while Charged Card for 1 counter “just” does 5 damage with Ranged for 2 resources, which is… still good… it accelerates in value quickly from 2 counters onwards because you gain the coveted Piercing and Overkill effects at 2 and 3 respectively, as well as the damage. This means for 2 resources and 3 counters, you can deal 7 with Ranged, Piercing, and Overkill. Whew!

This ability to pump up events also has a huge effect on synergy with aspected cards like Stealth Strike and Relentless Assault (Galaxy’s Most Wanted* #44) where being able to overcharge their damage allows you to ensure you trigger any additional benefits far more often. There’s nothing worse than burning a Precision Strike (Wolverine* #18) to deal damage that can’t quite finish off the enemy you’re trying to defeat. If only it could do 1-3 additional damage on demand… As removing counters is limited only by the 3 per event limit and how many counters that you have available to you, you can even sequence your turn around multiple damage sources for some huge bursts of damage when the stars align.
Gambit’s playstyle revolves primarily around flipping constantly between his forms – spending time in Alter-Ego to thwart and make use of powerful Alter-Ego only cards, then switching to hero form to gain a charge counter, which can then be spent to blow up a priority target. Even better, those counters are not removed when he goes back to Alter-Ego. This means you can effectively get a counter every turn cycle, stockpiling the counters for when you need them, maximizing the value of your events, which you can pay for with his powerful resource card, Molecular Acceleration.
That being said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how powerful Gambit is defensively. With 3 base DEF, he’s already an incredibly powerful defensive tank, but that does prevent you from using his Alter-Ego ability, so you basically have to choose which to lean into – thwarting or defence, while his offensive power remains relatively static. Gambit’s Guild Armor corrects that, allowing him to defend once without losing his ability to use Thief Extraordinaire, ensuring that he takes no damage thanks to the power of his Natural Agility.

Gambit’s Weaknesses
- No reliable, built-in card draw
- Resource generation can be unreliable
- Thief Extraordinaire has occasionally significant downsides
As you might imagine from my gushing so far, Gambit’s weaknesses aren’t my favourite thing to talk about, but there are a few meaningful ones. First his only built-in card draw is tied entirely to The Thieves’ Guild, which is far from reliable. His resource generation, good as it is, comes from double-resource cards. This means that your resources will come in bursts, which can mean that he won’t consistently have that resource generation available every turn, unlike an upgrade resource generator.
Although Gambit’s alter-ego ability is extremely powerful, relying on Thief Extraordinaire does have a few meaningful downsides. The first is that using it every turn will dramatically accelerate the encounter deck over the course of the game – you’re going through an additional card every turn if you use Thief Extraordinaire every turn, so every turn you use the ability to remove threat from a target other than the main scheme, you fall a tiny step behind the main scheme, ever so slowly. That’s relatively minor, but is definitely worth mentioning. The bigger downside of overuse of the ability can result in you exhausting your hero for very little gain. Against weaker villains, you’re going to regularly hit 1 or even 0 boost icons and remove very little threat, while also losing yourself the ability to recover. This is the main reason why Gambit’s defensive capabilities are important, and why I tend to like using cards like Crew Quarters (Venom* #29) and the X-Mansion to attempt to offset the problem somewhat. It’s still worthwhile, as you can prevent some extremely bad boosts from coming out, and gain the knowledge of what’s on top to be able to plan accordingly, but relying on being able to use Thief Extraordinaire every turn can definitely occasionally backfire.
Aspect Pairings for Gambit
Justice is the obvious natural pairing for Monsieur LeBeau, thanks to cards he himself introduces to the aspect like Operative Skill and Breaking and Entering. His proclivity for staying in Alter-Ego means that threat can occasionally add up beyond even Creole Charmer and Thief Extraordinaire’s ability to thwart, so having extra thwart available to back that up can really help.
Aggression is another pairing that makes a lot of sense, leaning into Gambit’s ability to boost attack events reliably. Cards like the previously mentioned Relentless Assault and Precision Strike really benefit from boosting the damage, and there’s an interesting angle that you can go for where you still spend time in Alter-Ego and use Aggression’s ability to do a ton of damage with allies to fill in the gaps between Gambit’s burst for a steady flow of damage. Gambit can actually work extremely well with allies, as he can use them to their maximum damage and thwarting output while remaining safe, as he doesn’t regularly need to use them to defend when he’s in Alter-Ego so often.
This is why I’m pretty sure that Leadership is secretly the strongest aspect for Gambit. Leadership has great card draw across many cards, which shores up one of his very few weaknesses, effectively allowing him to fulfil his destiny of being able to do literally everything at once. Damage, threat, protection for the table, Leadership Gambit has it all.
Protection is obviously something that Gambit will be far from bad at, with his +3 DEF, defensive cards in his kit, and generally solid all-rounder abilities to control the game while avoiding damage, but I think Protection is likely his worst aspect. That’s not to say it’s unplayable – it’s likely still stronger than most B-tier characters who are literally designed with Protection in mind, but it’s the weakest of 4 good options. The biggest problem I have with Protection Gambit is that he is extremely reliant on playing events to do his thing, and if those resources are blown on upgrades and defensive events, he just won’t have the firepower available that he does as one of the other aspects.
Overall, Gambit* is an absolutely incredible addition to our S-Tier Heroes and my inner child is delighted. I was convinced that I was going to be disappointed because my expectations for Gambit were so high, but he’s got the power to more than meet them. Sure, I don’t get to hurl my cards across the room, but his fantastic combination of threat control, deck manipulation, survivability and raw damage output make him a powerhouse in solo and duo play. Whether he’s as effective in a 4-player game is definitely in question, but as a duo, it’ll be a while before I can bring myself to play another character.
Gambit’s powerful, but not in a boring way. He still has a lot of complexities to his gameplay, but his ceiling is so high that he absolutely deserves his place among the best. Confused by some of his strange sequencing needs and interactions? Check out our Rules Clarification page to get to grips with Marvel Champions’ latest and greatest hero.
Summary
Good
- Can thwart in Alter-Ego
- Delivers huge bursts of damage exactly when it's needed
- Insane survivability
Bad
- No reliable, built-in card draw
- Resource generation can be unreliable
- Thief Extraordinaire has occasionally significant downsides