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What are some good loadouts for these guys? Do you go for a specific role or a little of all?

im trying mine witha heavy flamer for the game against tau im playing on Saturday. In the past he's always been an Eh unit. i used him as filler when i didn't have many models. When i used him before i gave him the mm and Pf and used him to messup tanks

I simply take a free powerfist then trade it for the power scourge. Nothing like lowering the WS of enemies by d3. He's cheap, effective and worth taking.

I enjoy running three of them from time to time, and it always ends up working. Last time was against a GK player surprisingly enough. Poor guy.

I used to play them with twin linked lascannons and missile launcher, trying to make them as shooty as possible. But that increased their cost and if one died, I felt it a lot more.

If I were to play them now, I would probably just field them with the reaper autocannon upgrade and call it a day. 105 points. Not so expensive that loss of one will hurt, but still effective.

Furthermore, with the large number of flyers these days, reaper autocannon is probably the most versatile and effective cannon you can slap on a hellbrute because if you have to shoot air with it, at least you get 4 shots.

10 points to upgrade the powerfist to missile launcher isn't worth it unless your army is designed with ranged hellbrutes in mind. There will be situations where you miss the powerfist. And in most melee situations, the powerfist will do just fine, so spending the points to upgrade it further to scrouge or thunder hammer is points spent on a situational weapon (because there's no gaurantee the hellbrute will even get into melee).

I was going to run two of them. Would the builds change? Similar?

I am running a Deathguard (plague marines on foot) list if this helps with choosing the loadouts.

1-3 hellbrutes, the setup doesn't change, for less than the cost of any other dreadnought you get 4 attacks on the charge, maybe 5, with lowering the enemies WS plus all that fancy str 10 damage. It's cheap, it works, it's chaos in a box.

The best loadout I've found was on a dusty shelf never to be used.

Run them in their basic form. A multimelta and powerfist for 100 points on an AV12 body is fairly good for what you get. Don't expect wonders. With this loadout you can take advantage of any roll you get on the crazy table (if you survive) and you can choose to hunt tanks or try and munch on some infantry. Without support or other armor pieces these guys will get slagged. Mobility is also a huge issue with them, so feel free to run one with long range weapons if you want it contributing to the fight from turn one.

How about a shooty version with reaper autocannon and missile launcher for 115 pts?

Also was thinking an all round version with reaper auto cannon and heavy flamer for 120 pts?

Lately I've been playing with forgeworld's sonic dreads. Blastmaster for 125 points, also comes with dirge caster and assault grenades, and can swap heavy flamer for a doom siren.

I like them this way, but you do have to take noisemarines (and have an opponent that's willing to swap "Helbrute" for "dreadnought" in the forgeworld entry and not be a jerk about it)

Unfortunatly mine has been sitting sidelines with the rest of my AV12 assaulty/shooty walkers. However if your really intent on taking one he is the only actual multi-melta in the chaos codex (obliterators can also have one if you want). Its a fluffy unit, but I wouldn't expect much out of it on the table, very flimsy for something so close range. I think a ML and reaper would be the best loadout though.

Run them cheap and run it with other armor values on the table. A Hellbrute following up a mauler fiend will do wonders.

Using the old "DISTRACTION CARNIFEX" strategy with Hellbrutes can work wonders. Use them for target saturation. I run mine naked (MM DCCW), and have him run up along one flank alongside big group of chaos spawn, other flank has Khornate Raptors, and a Vindicator, and I have Berzerkers/Kharn and an Axe of Blind Fury DP running up the middle.

If you opponent focus on the other things running him down, the Hellbrute will typically make it in close....and can do surprisingly well. If your opponent focuses some firepower on the 'brute, he's generally not shooting the more dangerous things that are also on their way. Either way, it's win-win.

Tried 3 helbrutes with 2 maulerfiends, a squadron of slaanesh daemon chariots and a squad of bikes the other day.

New tau shot every one of them down by turn 2. Hooray.