O Khazar's Diary
Highlights
This is an swarm deck using multiple unique allies. The idea is to put Khazar's Diary into play, breed a bit with The Embrace, defend by putting some allies into play and wait until Khazar's Diary triggers. At this point, the dead allies come back into play as wraith to stealth & bleed the successive preys out of the game.
The high recursion using Sudario Refraction is a strong point of the deck, allowing it to adapt its defence to the table context. It is very passive in the game beginning and uses Deflection and Delaying Tactics to defend a much as possible, while bloating with Liquidation.
The deck is focused on bringing as many minions into play as possible, and relies a lot on the allies and their capacities. As such, it does have only limited combat, bleed or stealth modules. However, it hopes to quickly bring into play good rush or intercept allies like Carlton Van Wyk, Ossian and, specifically, Cry Wolf.
Cry Wolf fits this deck extraordinarily well: playing it requires to have some Anarch Convert to make the Giovanni O Anarch, but that is a small price to play, especially since it also gives them access to to recruit their allies safely. Cry Wolf being unique and burning automatically, it will add a counter to the Khazar's Diary systematically, while still providing a dreadful rush for a bit of table control.
The Unmasking and FBI Special Affairs Division help making all these allies stronger defenders when they come into play.
Tips & Tricks
Jake Washington is an excellent device in this deck as burning him in any way will add one counter on Khazar's Diary easily.
Variants
Minor variations exist, for example Iñaki Puigdollers's deck from 2009 uses Change of Target to help protect the minions — even the allies — from unforseen blocks. He also included some Tupdogs in the crypt: they can not undertake directed actions but they avoid repeating minions in the crypt, they can still block, recruit an ally like the Repo Man, and provide one more minion to bring back as a wraith once Khazar's Diary kicks in.
The Faeries variant was played in Enrico De Stefano's deck from 2018. It uses a dozen Draeven Softfoot and their burn option to quickly bring more allies into the ash heap, making it easier to get into play. It also uses more copies of The Embrace and Khazar's Diary as the idea is to trigger the Diary sooner, and bring all these Draeven Softfoot back as wraith with the new born vampires, for a faster, more aggressive version of the archetype.