Makeda2 or Xerxis2 or - what?

1) Yes, and as i said previously they also make you force your beasts out of ctrl and give you puppet master when needed
2) Legends are monsters. The best skorne unit by far and they are VERY good for their price. Are you sure that you are looking at the skorne after the errata?

First of all they are def 14 arm 15, def 16 in melee, def 18 with makeda 1 against range. They are very hard to deal with. Second you have 3 weapon masters at mat 8 with spd 7, relentless charge and side step: they reach places, hits reliably and hard. They output 5 attacks, half the attacks of a full unit for roughly the same price as half unit. For example the Keltarii (similar defences and speed) are 15 pts for 10 attacks. You pay 8 points for 5 attacks, plus weapon master, extra mat (more hits), 5 wounds and COMBO SMITE. That special attack makes you win games and drop heavies. Legends of Halaak are the best character unit in the game i think. They are obnoxious.

And Makeda 2 can stay death them too.

3) With the second list i beat a ragnor list with Mulg, Mauler and Earthborn. I think you can do just fine short of colossals and maybe (not sure) the sturdiest Khador lists. The first list can handle colossals and khador too but has more difficulties against shooty lists.
4) I described before, cats form a wall in front of everything. Makeda casts storm rager on radheim, Despoiler keeps using the animus and upkeeps for free. You advance and you attrition your opponent out, looking for assassination openings if the caster comes too much forward. It's not an hard list to play, you just need to understand that makeda 2 won't cast any spells.

3) I didn't try it against Vlad 1 to be honest. You should try it and see how it goes. On paper though i can say that sign and portents is the only thing that will make you sweat a bit. Still, 3 cats waterfalling a single khador jack (you combine the pounce attack with the spear attack of another cat in melee to gain +2 mat +2 dmg) will make you deal an average of 14 damage per turn. If you can apply dark shroud while protecting the despoiler, you'll deal 20 damage per turn. In 2 turns you will drop an heavy with 3 cats. If you apply 2 cats and Radheim you'll do 22 damage. So on average you should kill a couple of Jacks over 2 turns without committing any heavy. If you catch Vladimir in despoiler animus, he will be very sad.

Can Vlad jacks kill the cats? If he casts signs and portents he won't fuel his jacks, so each jack have 3 attacks on average. You have 6 stay deaths and 1 tough (on average), so you can effectively nullify 2-3 jacks per turn. As long as you can avoid being engaged with more than 3 jacks at a time, you'll win on attrition. That's the only thing you need to pay attention. Change your wall formation to only have 3 cats on the front and the others a bit behind. Cats jump threat range is very long, so you don't need to play them exactly in line, use the fact that khador doesn't have reach.

Ereshkigal, thank you for comments and ideas! Will try them.