so first of all, only some people think Firebranded, suck, a fair few people quite like them, the heal a lot and are relatively tanky with a decent ranged attack
your magic liking friend, have they had a look at sandeep, there not usually the first master I'd suggest to new players as there a bit expensive to collect as their crew is spread around several boxes, but thermality they fit a lot of what you listed, he himself is a ranged magical summoner that also gets to make his models take extra actions outside of their activations while his crew is diverse featuring everything from tanky elemental golems, to fast moving wind gamin to human mages as well having a fair few movement tricks.
the other possible crew to look at would be molly who would prob be cheaper but has a lot of the same appeal. she's a ranged spell caster, who doesn't summon herself but does have a model in her crew that does, and is more controlling than sandeep and her crew has a ton of movement tricks.
for your model who likes guns, perdita, raspy, parker, lord cooper and ophelia are generaly your "gun" crews, where as if your looking for conditions, mcmoring and brewy are your poison crews, kaeris, Reva and Sonia are your fire crews and then pandora kind of uses all conditions
if your looking for control crews, then youko, colette and seamus all can be controlling, youko actually makes your opponent start with one less card, Colette is highly mobile while having tones of movement tricks while seamus also has a ton of movement attacks while also carrying around the biggest gun in the game