Thing is, look at the scenarios where Mathilde has needed backup and hasn't had it. It's not where there's been a single enemy she needs to kill. She's exceptionally good at that. It's when she's faced a large mass of enemies that have threatened to overwhelm her with numbers.
It happened outside Drakenhoff when Abelhelm died. It happened when she assassinated the goblin leader. It happened when she assassinated the orc leader a bit later.
The optimised mount there is a big heavy warhorse to charge in and break a bunch of enemy infantry.
It can't. Doppelganger makes Mathilde look like someone else, not someone else look like her. Even if it did, that relies on her having an ally she's prepared to sacrifice. The advantage of the Rider is that if it's manifestation is killed it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter whether Mathilde was actually on horseback or not. What matters is whether it's possible that Mathilde could have cast Shadowsteed.
At the battle in Kislev she could have had a Red Rider being obvious acting as a decoy, and whether Mathilde was herself on horseback is irrelevant.
Similarly, in the various Karak in/exfiltrations, Mathilde could have left a Rider Mathilde behind her to engage people pursuing her, and they'd have thought she'd just cast Shadowsteed and stopped to fight them. They wouldn't know to try to bypass Rider Mathilde to chase the real Mathilde.
As I've mentioned above, one of the advantages of the Shadowsteed is that unlike a knight or a regular horse, it doesn't have to be plausible that you could have got a horse there, as Mathilde can cast it anywhere the ceilings are high enough.
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