Thoughts on the Heldrake

I am having a really hard time putting together a good chaos list.  I think that at least part of it is because I might be doing it wrong with the Heldrake.  I have been tabled by 1 Heldrake, and it may have skewed my perception, and after facing it a few times, and running one a few times, I still think my perception is skewed from that one time I got slaughtered.

My most recent games showed me that positioning further back can stop the vector strike, and your opponent bringing his air on to the opposite side of the board from the rest of his army means you can vector strike is air OR flame his guys.

I think it is obvious by now that I am assuming that one is always taking the Baleflamer with a drake, because it is just too awesome not to.  I believe that this is why I am having so much trouble coming up with a list that I like, I am assuming that the Heldrake has to have a baleflamer to be worth the points, so I am taking the Heldrake as my anti-infantry, and then I am spending too many points trying to cover anti-air.  The issue is that Chaos has ALOT of was to kill stuff on the ground, but nothing nearly as efficient as the Heldrake for killing things in the air, and trying to force something else into the anti-air role is leaving me unhappy, because I end up with a list that doesn't have enough anti-troop OR anti-air.

So I am going to try to make some more lists, with auto-cannons on the drakes.  If I take 3, then maybe the baleflamer on one, but I am starting to think that the baleflamer is a trap.  It looks great on paper, and works very well the first time you enemy faces it, but it is not the unstoppable killing machine that you want it to be...