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First off are the Hellbrutes worth the squeeze? I guess that can be situational but what's your overall opinion. Lastly what's the best way to use the Hellbrutes?

In a Hellcult formation. Bubble-wrapping works wonders. As far as weapons. Depends. I like having the autocannon one, or lascannon/ml one. You can get by with the stock multi-melta one if you run a bunch in the other formation but for the life of me atm, I can't remember what it's called.

The only tactic i've found to work is with the Helfist Murderpack formation. It makes a squadron of 5 Hellbrutes and from there you can take a legacy from IA13 called Maelstrom Raider that gives the vehicle Outflank (which confers to the rest of the unit) so you get to outflank all 5 helbrutes at once and start rampaging your opponents backlines. And since they are a unit they you can buff all of them at once with psychic powers and such.

Well this thread is exploding.

What I prefer to do is run two heavy flamers its super cheap and creates a 14" bubble around the Helbrute so even if he does get immobilized he becomes a wall for people to have to deal with.

Btw, immobilized dreadnought/hellbrute can't pivot and heavy flamers aren't turret weapons.

Brutes got a nice addition in cc power with two additional attacks. Multi-melta and heavy flamers are cheap and efficient.

I think helbrutes are pretty well balanced now. Balanced units might not cut it in a hyper competitive environment but when people aren't taking their toughest lists they should be decent. The base cost of a helbrute with no upgrades is good for a multi-melta and four S10 AP2 attacks at initiative. Defensively (against shooting) they're about what you should expect for 100 points but in combat AV12 is brilliant

Even without formations I think they'd work well in an MSU list with lots of rhinos, small bike/spawn units etc.

- They're 10 points cheaper than min autohavoks for a black legion warband for MMelta/Fist.
-The Murderpack allows them to be buffed with invis or shrouded to create a bit of a problem for some lists.
- You can make the Murderpack alpha your warlord and have the infiltrate carry through to the unit if you want to have some fun with that. Also allows outflank if you wanted that instead.

That's about it. They're less bad with the grenade nerf, but since high volumes of mid str shooting are the meta right now, AV12 doesn't last very long at all and without drop pods, they're just not going to get into position. If you have need of a cheap counter assault unit, well, you're CSM, you should probably have a bunch of things that'd love to assault stuff in your own DZ, so why are you looking at 'Brutes?

They are the only way to get mobile multimeltas in your army outside of Oblits though, and that's not nothing with the restrictions in a BL warband. There's definately worse ways to spend 100 points in the CSM dex, that's for sure.

The Mayhem pack is a trap. You proably don't have reserve manipulation and you certainly don't have scatter mitigation and rolling on the chart is going to screw you over more often than not I've found. The mobility is nice, but scatter is not. I'd say it works as intended about 20% of the time and fails miserably about 60% of the time with the other 20% being passable but nothing special. Not really great odds for 345 points. You could have almost had a renegade knight instead.

The Helcult is nice for the Cultists rather than the Brute. That said, they become incredibly annoying as Fearless blobs and without having to fork over points for Typhus.

Otherwise, I prefer running two in a Warband with stock MM, simply because more CC threats helps. I take an Ectomancy Sorcerer and ideally fish for Ghoststorm, so I can get them around the board.

Cover is your friend. If you have Incursion, summon Fiends on the turn before you expect to pull an assault. Bring expendable screening units with you so you keep the charge. Fiends are nice so you can drop their Initiative on the charge, and smack a Knight (the trick also works with Maulerfiends too).

I've had good results with murderpack back when they were 2 attacks base. The best you couldprobably get is a bunch of earth mages in kabal to teleport the brutes on a flying ruin for 1-st turn charges. Oh, don't forget to buff them with move through cover or they'll get immobilized.