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First of all, I'm not knocking Be'Lakor at all, I think he's an awesome character. However, I have been using him in a lot of games with a variety of lists and I wanted to share what I have personally found.

In a flying circus list he is amazing, almost as much of an auto-take in my opinion as Fateweaver himself. Telepathy utility is beyond important and he can take almost anything in the game in a fight (though dropping him down is usually a bad idea). Also, unless he is up against ignores-cover weaponry he is very hard to kill because it is not hard to get a 2+ cover save in ruins with him, while also casting invisibility on a fellow FMC.

However, outside of a flying circus list he leaves much to be desired. Sure, he is still awesome, but being able to cast invisibility on units no longer becomes worth his 350 points price tag. Add to this that he must be played extremely conservatively, as 4 T5 wounds is not hard at all to get rid of, and he usually ends up not affecting the game very much. 4 T5 wounds at 350 points does not make for a very good bullet sponge, and your opponent will undoubtedly focus him down. I have found repeatedly that outside of a flying circus army his 350 points could be spent much better elsewhere.

Feel free to share your experiences with him.

I have found that it is absolutely vital to run a MTO style list. You need ~3 or so other major threats besides Be"lakor to engage the opponent. The FMC list of course qualifies for this as it has 3-4 additional threats that can be where you need when you need. To be entirely upfront my current MTO lists were semi inspired (at least the actually design philosophy was) by Jy2's herald hammer lists. Be'Lakor has just expanded the list of units that I can use in this type of list as his guaranteed invisibility and added MC engagement abilities help to enable such lists.

The units have found him to be great when combined with. Remember I run 2-3 of these unit with Be'Lakor.

-Mini Screamer star
-Blood crushers+Karanak (hounds are better, but I like the model and it does work alright in the S6-7 meta)
-Plague drone unit, fairly large w/ grimoire herald attached and/or epidemius
-landraider+scary CC unit, usually kharne+CSM or Typhus+plague marines, has the added benefit that Kharne+CSM is brutal against the new knight models.
-juggerlord+spawn
-Nurgle Bikerlord+spawn/bikes
-beasts, fairly large w/ grimoire herald attached and/or epidemius

Ones that I don't use but would work as well or better than the above.
-seekers, large unit+herald
-Big unit of Hounds+herald

I have also been toying around with entering Be'Lakor on from reserves with some heldrakes and oblits and deploying zombie units to take the punishment. I haven't gotten the time to really mess with it though. I also am not convinced whether it will be reliable enough even with comms and whether I can both avoid interceptor on Be'Lakor and get him within range to contribute to the oblits.

The biggest thing is I usually bring something to block LoS and make a point of getting LoS blocking terrain on the board. This make Be'Lakor much more survivable as the only thing I really fear with him that fires without LoS has a 30" range (SMS, dang Tau). In this case 2-3 major threats bum rushing the Tau usually requires their attention to kill and if they fire on Be'Lakor they waste their LoS weapons. The Landraider option interestingly enough works really well with him as it blocks LoS to him itself.

I also have found that I sometimes have to start him further back than the rest of the army so his swoop doesn't take him too far forward. Nothing worse than a Be'Lakor alone within 12" of a bunch of small arms...ouch. The only reason Be'Lakor doesn't get blasted out of the sky and killed immediately in most my games is the fact the other units can multicharge the opponent and so are large immediate threats. When the opponents have focused down on Be'Lakor they usually waste too much firepower and are left without enough to handle the other units who get multicharges and can usually do more damage. Be'Lakor is definitely a scalpel.

He is not a tank at all and is one of the easier units to kill if you have ignore cover, have him in LoS, and can ground him. Fateweaver always makes him much tougher as he can reroll his failed grounding checks. They are like super pals!

I also have never taken him in a primary CD HQ slot. He either gets put in CSM primary or allied or CD allied with CSM primary. I am not a fan of uncontrolled warp storm rolls.

I know exactly what you're saying. I have run him with things like: 20 strong flesh hound squads with heralds, blobs of daemonettes, blobs of cultists with a nasty character, soul grinders (though soul grinders work awesome in FMC lists IMO), etc. I haven't tried the land raider tactic yet, as I'm just scared my opponent will maneuver all their S8 and lower weaponry to simply get a bead on him, a land raider can't protect him from all angles.

The problem with Be'Lakor is he usually is seen as top priority over everything else, and unfortunately if he can be seen he can be killed with an afterthought, it's not like he's worth it to take pressure off other units.

I haven't run him in a CD HQ slot either, the Warpstorm is just too unforgiving to risk it.

The only problem I face is that I have to play so conservatively that at the end of the game I feel like another unit of 20 flesh hounds, 2 soul grinders, a Nurgle bike lord with nurgle spawn, etc. would have made much more of an impact on the game than he did.

The landraider actually can protect him from a huge swath of the board. Just turn it and pop smoke turn 1 and fly Be'Lakor to the middle of it.

I usually stagger my attack with Be'Lakor flying to board center and the other units (spawn, bikers, etc.) rushing into the opponent. I also have been making it a point to place LoS blocking terrain in both deployment zones and the center of the board to use.

I keep him out of LoS to as many units as possible and try to avoid situations where quality skyfire can get a shot at him. I tend to use him more as a buffing unit early game with some debuffs to forward riptides, etc. Then after the rest of my army has made a splash I will start hunting tough stuff with Be'Lakor. It is not unlikely that I will engage something with my other units they can't handle (wraithknights and riptides usually) and then use Be'Lakor to get they out later.

Soulgrinders would work nicely as well. Don't have any but they move fast enough and hit reasonably hard with a little boost to their to hit rolls (invisibility ftw).

Be'Lakor should take some decent shooting as long as MLs are not getting him or he isn't grounded. An entire army of 5 waveserpents doesn't quite average a dead Be'Lakor (and against such an army I would use the grimoire on him if you have it). I am curious what army your playing that gives you the opinion that Be'Lakor can be killed "with an afterthought". I would guess Tau pulse bomb or missileside spam?

I generally have Fateweaver (he's simply too useful not to have) get the Grimoire's buff on him to increase his survivability. It may not be a 2++ rerollable like the Uber-prince or Screamer star, but it means that he has nothing to fear from low weight of fire but high strength weapons like Lascannons, and is much, much safer from attempts to drown him in wounds.

It also means he can go balls in and attack nearly any character in the game without fear, even including the Forge World Primarchs. .

I use him as an Ally to my Crimson Slaughter detachment. He flies with my Nurgle Lord, Sorcerer, and Nurgle bikers. I use Invisibility on them, and then turbo boost the unit. It gives them a 2+ cover save. Focus on Be'Lakor? The bikes eat your face my next turn. Focus on the bikes? Good luck with the 2+ cover save. And thanks for leaving Be'Lakor alone to come down and wipe out a unit himself while the bike lord detaches and mulches a squad and the other bikers and sorcerer take on another one.

I've had great success doing this. Only problem I've run into is Tau lists striping my cover and blowing the bikes away with an Ion accelerator or plasma rifles.

I have a friend who has been trying him out as of late against my Eldar. The first game he was flying solo, and I shot him out of the sky on turn 1 with 2 Wave Serpents. The next game he was with a unit of nurgle spawn, and a chaos bike lord. I more or less Ignored the unit until it reached my lines. When it got close, I buffed up my Suncannon Wraithknight and charged him in. He tied up the unit for 3 turns (thanks to blind from the scattershield) while the rest of my army shot his to death. When the Knight did fall, there was only 3 spawn left with one wound each, Be'Lakor, and the lord with 1 wound left. Needless to say they were cleaned up swiftly.

I think that having multiple FAST threats that start on the board are a must if you want to run Be'lakor. If he is solo, or in some sort of single death star unit, it is too easy for a fast army to kite away or tarpit the unit. Flying circus is the obvious choice here, but there are others. ansacs named some great options.

The biggest problem there is that Be'Lakor can never join a unit, as he is not an IC.

You pretty much showed what I was talking about; he is just too easy to kill on his own, and unlike most fast-moving threats, you're not on the good end of a trade off if he's taking shots that would normally go somewhere else in your army.

Its all about target saturation. As well as taking advantage of terrain.

Need to have a fast moving force that really gets in their face while belakor hides and buffs units.

Then around turn two or so when everything is in their face, potentially charging is when you send him out. At that point if they want to dedicate a lot of fire power to a guy who isnt a threat that turn. Their loss.

 Leth wrote:
Its all about target saturation. As well as taking advantage of terrain.

Need to have a fast moving force that really gets in their face while belakor hides and buffs units.

Then around turn two or so when everything is in their face, potentially charging is when you send him out. At that point if they want to dedicate a lot of fire power to a guy who isnt a threat that turn. Their loss.

Telepathy is more of a debuff school if I'm remembering what it offers correctly.

 Leth wrote:
Its all about target saturation. As well as taking advantage of terrain.

Need to have a fast moving force that really gets in their face while belakor hides and buffs units.

Then around turn two or so when everything is in their face, potentially charging is when you send him out. At that point if they want to dedicate a lot of fire power to a guy who isnt a threat that turn. Their loss.

The problem is while that's a good way to keep him alive, it really isn't cost effective. He's not going to be worth 350 points when he's doing that.

He is only doing it for a turn, maybe two, if he gets 1-2 components of your army into your opponents face than he really has done his job since they will just steam roll through most armys in the current meta who have zero dedicated CC components.

Once your opponent is engaged then you just fly out and have him target things.