Seems that you're wasting a bit of firepower by mixing weapons, if they're re-rolling wounds the Ironstriders' Lascannons are probably wounding on 2's anyway, and even then they can only kill one at a time.

 Kandela wrote:

Don't get me wrong they're not bad for a squishy autocannon platform, but they're too expensive to justify the Lascannon upgrade.

Agreed. I was unclear in my post, sorry. Ironstriders arrive with cheap autocannons option, I misused "sniping" word - it was supposed to indicate that Dragoons have radium jezzails upgrade (getting them on sniping duty), but Ironstriders still come with autocannons to fulfill more of a heavy support role. Sorry for not clarifying that from the beginning.

Then comes the problem it competes with the Dunecrawler for the Heavy support slot which the Dunecrawler has better weapons and can preform the Ballistari's job far better and packs an invul save to boot.

Indeed. Dunecrawlers are very cost-effective, but having 4 of them already in my army I simply refuse to have a full board of just Vanguards and Dunecrawlers. Talk about repetitiveness

 Kandela wrote:
Hoplites shields look sick. I thought also of making my army "modular" so I could just change couple of units for others - 2 squads of 2 Dragoons with 3 Ironstriders and a squad of Rangers with 2 arquebuses cost the same as Imperial Knight Warden with icarus autocannons. That way I could change on the fly between sniping "scalpel" and big metal lump of condensated "screw you!"