The Tau were putting up extreme resistance at Asharis(which the foul xenos renamed Tash'n). Stealth snipers and missile artillery everywhere. Knowing it was suicide to try and outshoot the Tau with Tactical Marines, I countered with Assault Marines. Normally, I don't really use them, but they're the perfect counter. They can close fast, Tau have next to no melee ability, and Melta Bombs rip apart their tanks. Skull Probes sniffed out their stealthsuits, and Assault Marines dropped right on them.
Even so, taking one of the main objectives, Unity Plaza, was
costly. And worse, doing so was supposed to render the stealthsuits ineffective, but it didn't. The REAL objective, however, was the death of the Ethereal running the show. He was sitting atop a tiered citadel guarded by everything the Tau had. Each step up the fortress was paid a toll in blood, each stair built from a corpse. Reaching the top proved almost too costly, I had to fall back to regroup. Less than half the force made it back down. All I could do was park the Land Raider to cover what was left of the force.
Worse still, the Tau had counter-attacked, overrunning the former forward position, retaking Unity Plaza, and burning some of the defenses of the base. Getting reinforcements to the citadel was next to impossible. Then the dumbass Ethereal waltzes right in front of the Land Raider. Mission complete, Tau removed from the campaign, gg.
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.