I received my order today, which was much sooner than the drop's original estimate of a 7/15 ship date. Since no extra cartridges were available from here, I had to buy more elsewhere; I'm not a big fan of black ink, which is almost always what pens include (and did here), so I bought a few brands of blue ink. My order here was for one Rook and one Tasche so that I could try both. When I got them, I opened them up (note: there's no real packaging to speak of, the pens are just inside plastic sleeves), put different cartridges in each, and gave them both a quick try.
My first impression is that the Rook writes better than the Tasche, though I've read that a little tweaking can improve the Tasche's performance. I haven't seen much if anything suggesting that that's needed with the Rook, which matches my brief testing. On better quality paper, both seem to write fairly well for me. On lower quality paper, the Rook seemed to perform better than the Tasche. Also, the Rook's nib seems to have a little bit of flexibility; more so than the Tasche's. That's not to say either is particularly flexible, just that I think there's a bit more give with the Rook so you get a little bit more variation in line width with it. Both pens are quite small when closed, the Tasche being a little longer, but post their caps and you've got basically full-sized pens to write with. Given the uncapped size, I'd say they're basically unusable without posting the cap, but that seems to be the point of pocket pens. They're also light, and the Tasche seems a little slimmer, perhaps due to its straight body shape (the Rook is more curved). Unfortunately, the Tasche seems like it's prone to leaking -- I stood the closed pen nib-down for a little while to help get the ink started, and there was ink in the cap after I did so.
So from my admittedly brief testing, I'd say the Rook is the better pen. However, if this drop is run again, I'd suggest that buyers get one of each pen so that they can try them out for themselves and see which one they like better. There's no guarantee that my experience and preferences will match yours, but I hope this min-review is of some help to potential buyers of either pen.
My first impression is that the Rook writes better than the Tasche, though I've read that a little tweaking can improve the Tasche's performance. I haven't seen much if anything suggesting that that's needed with the Rook, which matches my brief testing. On better quality paper, both seem to write fairly well for me. On lower quality paper, the Rook seemed to perform better than the Tasche. Also, the Rook's nib seems to have a little bit of flexibility; more so than the Tasche's. That's not to say either is particularly flexible, just that I think there's a bit more give with the Rook so you get a little bit more variation in line width with it. Both pens are quite small when closed, the Tasche being a little longer, but post their caps and you've got basically full-sized pens to write with. Given the uncapped size, I'd say they're basically unusable without posting the cap, but that seems to be the point of pocket pens. They're also light, and the Tasche seems a little slimmer, perhaps due to its straight body shape (the Rook is more curved). Unfortunately, the Tasche seems like it's prone to leaking -- I stood the closed pen nib-down for a little while to help get the ink started, and there was ink in the cap after I did so.
So from my admittedly brief testing, I'd say the Rook is the better pen. However, if this drop is run again, I'd suggest that buyers get one of each pen so that they can try them out for themselves and see which one they like better. There's no guarantee that my experience and preferences will match yours, but I hope this min-review is of some help to potential buyers of either pen.