well, first off i'm a dirty, filthy radical so i make use of the very tasty dark artifacts from the chapter approved article
i've tried a few varients of the assaulty inquisitor lord, but being a basic human really hurts... even with lots of power armoured and/or storm shield-equiped acolytes, it's very difficult to get alot of wounds out of a S3 character.
so now i've gone for more of a shooty - counter-assault lord; psycannon + power weapon w/books of pain & holocaust thrown in for kicks!
his retinue is a mix of defensive acolytes (power armour or storm shield) and heavy bolter gun servitors. a msytic is thrown in for the free shots he grants the unit at any enemy deep strikers!
basically, this unit sits and shoots, and if need be they can duff-up any smaller units that reach my lines, or else see off any hoard type units with a good holocausting
(at least, in theory!!!)
basically i'd stick to a shooty retinue if you really want to have any chance of making your pts investment back... inquisitors aren't really that much better than guardsmen in assault, mainly due to the fact that they are T3 IC's and thus are very easy to single-out with power toys/fists...
personally, i don't see much point in going for things like artificer armour either because you'll rarely get your save in the shooting phase (due to the 'mixed armour' rules, unless you load-up on acolytes w/artificer armour!) and anything you're likely to face in assault will almost always ignore any armour save you have...
hope this helps,
cheers!