Matt Wilson, the captain of the good ship Privateer Press has made some recent gestures for the Iron Kingdoms fanbase late last week. In addition to some rather substantial contributions to the Iron Kingdoms Yahoo Group, he has pledged to place some more emphasis on keeping the ever-hungering IK fanbase sated through more frequent web updates.

His sacrificial offering before the rabid hordes of fandom is an early peek at the Gunmage character class. From earlier readings of WARMACHINE: Prime, I had guessed that the Gunmage would be a prestige class available for Cygnaran wizarsd, under the tutelage of the Fraternal Order of Wizardry (in conjunction with the Cygnar royal armed forces). This appears to be one of the minor differances between the d20 system Iron Kingdoms and the miniatures/skirmishing game. All is well however. The Gunmage information made available yesterday on the Iron Kingdoms website includes everything there is to know about the new class, with the notable exceptions of the spell list and the stats on their fabled magelock pistols. These stats will be available within the week, per Captain Wilson.

The new class is interesting in that is appears to have rather limited arcane spellcasting ability (how limited depends upon the spell list, of course), that basically acts as a very specialized Sorceror. They have Simple weapons and pistol proficiency, d6 hit points, two favorable saving throw progressions, and a rather poor amount of skill points per level. Their pistol-related class abilities are about as cool as it gets, though: this is definately a great “tough & cool” character class. If you want to make a PC that swaggers through town like his owns the place, smacks down fools that run off at the mouth at him, and generally oozes pimpness from every pore, the Gunmage may be worth a go. They will also make a great NPC class in urban encounters for player character parties who have self-confidence disproportionate to their abilities.