I will never go thumb..but that's just me. I don't see why you should use thumbs. They take bandwidth, load slow for surfers with modem..and I don't think a page full of thumbs looks good.
Scenario 1 & 2.
Average joe visit your site. He looks at all thumbs and then click on one that he likes. He already know what is going to happen.
This is much better. Average joe visit you site. He looks at all text links and find a hot description(in the niche he loves?)..he then build a little expection before he click that link..so he get hot when he see that this expection match all pictures in in the gallery.
Thumbs is boring..text sells