How do I get the "Fast Break" achievement in HotS?

Solution 1:

Now this was fun.

I set up my Kerrigan slightly differently than yours, though I used the same army mutation / evolutions.

There's a couple things to note in general about this mission:

You will be reinforced. Often.

Wild Mutation is, in this case, hands down superior to Mend, though Spawn Banelings may have worked even better. You don't need to use Mend, because there's no reason to keep your troops alive - they will be replaced, almost as fast as you will lose them, especially the zerglings.

Wild Mutation trumps mend for these smaller units especially, since the 200 hitpoint shell benefits the weaker units a lot more than restoring their lost hitpoints.

Kerrigan has strong auto attacks.

46 Damage when played from the master archives. Kerrigan can solo most of the fights in the mission with proper micro (if need be), though this will be understandably slower. The key, though, is that this doesn't come from her abilities per se. I find that Chain Reaction + Fury puts out way more damage than crushing grip, even with Ability Efficiency. Chain Reaction is best when it's got lots of targets to jump too - and this mission has one dense clump of marines after another. Since the stun of crushing grip is relatively useless in this case (since, as per the previous bullet, we don't need to prevent our units from dying) all you're getting from Crushing grip is the paltry 30 damage. An attack or two of chain reaction more than makes up for that.

Your hydras and roaches are edible. Use them.

Once you start getting reinforced with Infestors, you're well on your way to building an unstoppable death ball. Nab all the Thors and Siege Tanks you can (but don't bother with siege mode), and if you're facing anything smaller, throw out as much fungus as you can.

Your infestors will run out of energy. So eat your zerg. Your new terran buddies will more than make up for any lost damage soaking or DPS.

Never Stop Moving

There is no reason to stand still on this map. You don't need to heal, you don't need to wait for abilities to finish cooling off. Just Marine Voice: go, go, go!

The faster you press, the more units you will inevitably lose - and the more units you will inevitably replace. More distance = more reinforcements.

Virophages are nice, but much too slow.

When you get to the prison area with the ability to plant Virophages, don't wait for them to grow. I spawned the southwest virophage, then went counter-clockwise around the area. I probably could have shaved 15 sec or so off if I had simply picked a direction and stuck with it.

Don't waste time on missile turrets unless you have to!

Missile Turrets are distractions. They don't shoot you, so don't worry shooting them. The sole exceptions are in the room where the Thor is shooting the coupling - you need to destroy the turrets in that room to advance to the next area.

Put it all together and...