Playing Against Vampires

The vampires deck relies very heavily on the Bloodghast/Highborn interaction for most of it's power. While this is a powerful combo, taking out the highborns can easily disrupt it. It is also important to note that when something like DoJ occurs killing all the vampires in the field at once, the vampires player can only activate the Highborn for itself (they can NOT activate it for every vampire that dies at the same time). Some versions also run Demon of Death's Gate for a very fast beatstick, so it is very important to monitor when they have 3 black creatures on the field at any given time. It is also important to note that currently Vampire Nighthawk is rarely used and their only flyer is the Bloodwitch (or possibly the Demon). Captivating Vampire can be a major pain to deal with once they hit the needed 5 vampires, logically if they run the Captivating Vampires they are most likely NOT running the Demon of Death's Gate as those cards clash together.

According to Kalastria Highborn at Magiccards.info, indeed they *can* trigger the Highborn multiple times for mass removal. This makes sense because the creatures hit the graveyard simultaneously, so that many Kalastria triggers go on the stack.

Many decks also cannot deal with Bloodghast in and of itself. A deck with defenders that don't kill the Bloodghast (Wall of Omens, Overgrown Battlement) would go a long way toward keeping an extra 2 points of damage from coming in every turn.

I've seen more versions run the Nighthawk now. Nighthawk is used against aggro as a supplement to Arc Trail that gains life and usually survives combat, so be wary if you're playing an aggro deck.