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2022 Scriptus Pen Show - 30 Oct 2022.
After 2 years, Scriptus is back!
Going into the show, I knew I wanted a vintage Esterbrook pen, I already had a ‘SJ’ so was looking for a ‘J’ and ‘LJ’ models.
I quickly found both a red 'J' and grey 'LJ' pen, both with a '2556 firm fine' nib. Fully restored and working for $40 each. Sold!
Now that I got what I originally came for, I had a look around.
In the booth for YouTuber Azizah of Gourmet Pens, I found a Esterbrook 'JR' in Carmine Red with a medium nib, no converter - $60. Sold! This will be my first modern Esterbrook pen since the brand's revival.
At another 2 booths I found original stock Tomoe River paper (White, A4, 100 pack, 52gsm - $20) and Diamine Rushbrooke Blue (80mL - $10).
Rushbrooke Blue was the Scriptus show ink for 2019 and I still have most of my original bottle left, so I now have 2 bottles of this ink.
Nothing else caught my eye enough until I saw the Phidon Pens booth was selling individual Blackwing pencils. I got 1 each of the standard pencils to try out: 1x 602, Matte, Pearl & Natural for $14.25 total.
Total damage to my wallet: $184.25
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Got a new Lamy Safari - the 2020 Violet, and realized I now own 6 of these pens.
Top to bottom:
- 2020 Violet - Matching colour clip - Matching colour cross cap top - Steel nib
- 2019 Mint Glaze - Chrome clip - Matching colour cross cap top - Steel nib
- 2019 Blue Macaron - Chrome clip - Matching colour cross cap top - Steel nib
- 2018 All Black - Black clip - Black cross cap top - Black nib
- 2017 Petrol - Black clip - Black cross cap top - Black nib
- 2012 Apple Green - Chrome clip - Matching colour cross cap top - Steel nib
Green now a regular edition!
Shock horror! A Special Edition colour is now a regular catalogue item.
In 2016 the Apple Green Safari was reissued as the Green Safari but now with a black cross cap top.
And in other news, I finally remembered that I have a Tumblr.
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New Cap for my Vac700!
Jan 2013, I purchased my 2nd TWSBI pen, a Vac700 and earlier this month I discovered that the cap was broken. As shown, the metal ring band had broken off from the rest of the cap. A quick email convo and PayPal for shipping to Canada resulted in a package waiting for me today (2017-07-18) as I came home from work.
This is the first time I’ve had one of my TWSBI pens break, and hopefully it will be my last.
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Found these in my desk the other day.
From left to right: Original (limited edition art project), Super & Pocket editions of The 8-Bit Tarot.
The 8-Bit Tarot by Indigo Kelleigh, is a recreation of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck in pixel art fashion. Each card was recreated at a resolution of 88x152 pixels using only the default Mac OS 256-colour palette.
Links:
Artist's Site: http://www.lunarbistro.com/games/8-bit-tarot/
Super: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/super-8-bit-tarot
Pocket: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/pocket-8-bit-tarot
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New Dice!
First Picture is the 150 RPG bulk dice set from Easy Roller Dice with 15 complete 10-piece sets. Also came with two dice bags.
Second Picture are two Chessex sets of ten d10s:
- Pearl White w/ Black, CHX LT641
- Festive Circus w/ Black, CHX 27242
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Finally got my order from Japan two days ago. Mario-themed Hanafuda cards.
Shown here with my first set of Mario-themed Hanafuda cards from the discontinued Club Nintendo program. The instructions are in Japanese but that’s okay, the instructions that came with the Club Nintendo set are in English.
Also this is the first international package I’ve ordered that was opened by Canada Customs..
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WotC support is Awesome! or why I have two D&D 5e Monster Manuals.
Thank You to Tavis C. and Jacob P. of Wizards of the Coast's Online Response Crew!
Thank You to Jamie, Product Replacement Coordinator!
Wizards of the Coast - Customer Support: Wizards.custhelp.com
Got my replacement 5e Monster Manual today from WotC as the one I originally purchased from Amazon was defective.
Been playing around with the 5e Starter Set and free Basic Rules for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition for a while now and I decided I needed the core rulebooks.
Picture:
Top: I had the Player's Basic Rules and Dungeon Master's Basic Rules printed and bound.
Bottom: The 5e Starter Set Rulebook and Starter Set Adventure: Lost Mine of Phandelver.
Looking around at prices online and in local stores I quickly decided on Amazon. Placed my order with Amazon Canada and a few days later on Monday 30 May 2016, a FedEx driver shows up with a package, my new books!
Wondering if I had the lastest printing (a long shot, but a shot) I loaded up the errata PDFs and started flipping though pages to see if I should bother printing those PDF files (I did) I found that my Monster Manual had miscut pages! I first page I found was when I tried to see if the Ambusher text for the Doppelganger (p82) in my copy was the latest text (6th printing).. Only to discover that about an inch off the bottom of the page was cut off! 18 pages in all were miscut.
Picture:
Left: My original Monster Manual with a miscut page 82.
Right: The replacement Monster Manual, no miscut pages!
Either way I had a defective book and had to decide if I should return it to Amazon or go though WotC's product replacement. The WotC way seems so much simplier, so I fired off a quick support ticket to Wizards with two photo attachments.
An hour later I got a response that said that they would send out a new Monster Manual as a replacement and that I didn't even need to send them back the defective book! I gave them my address and the support rep submitted the information to their Product Replacement team. The next day (May 31) an update, the replacement order is in to ship me a new Monster Manual, and that due to International shipping, it could take up to 21 business days before I receive it.
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Spindown d20s!
Didn’t include these in the pic with the rest of my dice as I don’t really see these as dice? I mean they’re for tracking a life total, not for rolling a random number.
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Picked up some new dice yesterday!
Circus with Black from Chessex's Festive line.
- 16mm d6 Dice Block
- 7-Die Polyhedral Set
Also ITAP of all my dice!
Top row of d6 Dice Blocks:
- 16mm Festive Circus with Black (CHX 27642)
- 12mm Festive Circus with Black (CHX 27842)
- 12mm Clear with White (CHX 23801)
- 12mm Dark Grey with Copper (CHX 25820)
Polyhedral Sets:
- Festive Circus with Black (CHX 27442)
- Dark Grey with Copper (CHX 25420)
- A lone Grey d20..
- 10-Piece Purple Koplow set
- 6-Piece Blue set from the D&D 5e Starter Set
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Found via Reddit on Imgur.
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Got my new Card-a-ma-jigs Tokens today.
Woo, get in!
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Banding and the bastard child that is “Bands with other.”
Sixth Edition (April 1999) came with new rule changes that effected all of Magic: The Gathering, not just for the core set.
Such changes included a 60-card minimum for constructed decks and the four-of rule for everything but basic lands; the old rules only stated that you must have at least 40-cards… And that’s it, no other restrictions.
Another such rule change was that artifacts generally no longer “turn off” when tapped. Of course there are a few artifacts whose effects still “turn off’ when they are tapped, but they now explicitly say so in their rules text.
Another thing introduced in Sixth Edition was the Stack (before it was batches and series) and Damage on the Stack.
Banding, introduced in Alpha, was one of the abilities made obsolete in Sixth Edition as it can be confusing to may players, new and old alike.
The following is my basic understanding of how Banding works. Of course I could be wrong, if I am feel free to contact me and give me corrections to any of this.
The key to the basic understanding of Banding is that it is has two parts. The first, it allowed your creatures to attack or block as a group, and second, it lets you decide how to distribute combat damage.
On Attacking:
You can declare any number of creatures that all have banding and up to one creature without banding as attacking in a band.
You declare a Benalish Hero (1/1, banding), a War Elephant (2/2, banding, trample), a Mesa Pegasus (1/1, banding, flying), and Grizzly Bears (2/2) as attacking in a band.
These creatures are now attacking together as a group! If one of your banding creatures gets blocked, they all get blocked.
Your opponent responds by blocking your War Elephant with their own Grizzly Bears. One member of your band has been blocked so every member of the band is also blocked. It doesn’t matter that the Mesa Pegasus has flying it is still blocked as part of the band.
Your creatures keeps any special abilities they have, but these abilities are not shared with the band. Mesa Pegasus still has flying but doesn’t give the other creatures in your band flying, nor does War Elephant give your band members trample.
Now comes the second part to banding. As you control a band, you can now choose how damage is assigned.
You assign 1 damage from the defending Grizzly Bears to your own Grizzly Bears and 1 damage to your War Elephant, thus all your creatures will survive combat. You also assign to the defending Grizzly Bears 1 damage from your Benalish Hero, and 1 damage from your Mesa Pegasus. The defending Grizzly Bears now has lethal damage thus your War Elephant can do 2 trample damage directly to the defending player. The remaining attacking Grizzly Bears in your band would just do its damage to the defending Grizzly Bears since it does not have trample.
In regards to planeswalkers, when your band of creatures attacks, they must attack as a group; they cannot split up and attack different things. Thus they are either all attacking the same player, or all attacking a planeswalker that player controls.
Remember: a band attacks together!
If any of the creatures in the band dies before the end of combat, the other surviving creatures in that same band still must attack together! Once declared as attacking in a band, that band cannot be dissolved and those creatures cannot be part of another band of creatures during the same combat.
On Blocking:
You cannot declare banding when blocking, but you can still effectively block with banding. When blocking with banding, only one of your creatures needs the banding ability. Then all of your other creatures can block with it as a band. This can be very beneficial as, if you remember, the second part of banding allows the player that controls a band to decide how combat damage is assigned.
Your opponent attacks with a Craw Wurm (6/4).
You control Durkwood Boars (4/4), Panther Warriors (6/3), Grizzly Bears (2/2), and a Benalish Hero (1/1, banding).
You can either take 6 damage or block. If you choose to block you can do so with the Panther Warriors or with the Durkwood Boars alone and have either of them and the attacking Craw Wurm die in combat, but you want both Panther Warriors and Durkwood Boars to survive combat. So you declare all four of your creatures quadruple-blocking Craw Wurm and as Benalish Hero has banding, you are effectively blocking as a band.
In the damage step of combat you can now assign 3 damage from Craw Wurm to your Durkwood Boars, 2 damage to your Panther Warriors, and the remaining 1 damage from Craw Wurm goes to Grizzly Bears. All your creatures survive combat! The opponent’s Craw Wurm takes 13 damage from your group and dies.
Remember the key to banding: you attack as one, you block as one. Every member of that band is attacking or blocking together! And as the one controlling a band that is blocking your opponent's attacking creature, you now control how that blocked creature assigns combat damage.
On attacking with a band and being blocked with banding:
You attack with a band and your opponent responds by blocking with banding. The second part of banding lets you decide how to distribute combat damage, but only to the band you control. Likewise your opponent can assign combat damage to their band as they see fit.
Best case scenario, or worse depending on how you look at it, is that both players assign damage to their bands in such a way that all the creatures in both bands will survive combat and that combat phase effectively ends in stalemate.
New scenario: A three-creature band with one creature having trample, is attacking and is blocked by another three-creature band with one creature having first strike. What happens now? Short answer: I don’t know.
This is normally where most of the confusion starts to set in, attacking or blocking with creatures that only have banding with no other special abilities or if only one special ability is in play that effects combat damage such as trample in the example on attacking stated above is mostly straight forward. When other special abilities that can also effect how and when combat damage is normally assigned comes into play with banding is where most people start to have confusion on how to resolve combat.
Okay, now for the really confusing part: “Bands with other.”
“Bands with other” is a… specialized version of banding.
Everything before this was straight forward, attack or block as a single group together, and ignore the normal rules on assigning combat damage with the player controlling the band deciding how to distribute combat damage.
The current rules for “bands with others” only came into effect with the Magic 2010 core set rules changes (M10 was released in July 2009!), before this it was big messy pile of absurdities only designed to give you massive headaches.
Magic 2010 brought with it such changes as:
Mulligans now happening simultaneously
The “in-play zone” is now the Battlefield.
The “Removed from the game” zone is now the exile zone
No more Mana Burn!
Combat damage no longer goes on the stack
Deathtouch and Lifelink become static abilities
etc.
“Bands with other” was introduced in Legends (June 1994), however only eight cards where ever printed with “bands with others” in their rules text.
The following cards have the rules as originally printed:
Cathedral of Serra. Land. “All your white legends gain bands with other legends.”
Seafarer’s Quay. Land. “All your blue legends gain bands with other legends.”
Unholy Citadel. Land. “All your black legends gain bands with other legends.”
Mountain Stronghold. Land. “All your red legends gain bands with other legends.”
Adventurers' Guildhouse. Land. “All your green legends gain bands with other legends.”
Tolaria. Legendary Land. “Tap: Add {U} to your mana pool. | Tap: During upkeep remove the banding or bands with other ability from target creature until end of turn.”
Master of the Hunt. 2GG. 2/2 Master (now errata'd as a Human). “2GG: Put a Wolves of the Hunt token into play. Treat this token as a 1/1 green creature with the ability bands with other Wolves of the Hunt.”
Shelkin Brownie. 1G. 1/1 Faerie (now errata’d as an Ouphe). “Tap: Remove the bands with other ability from target creature until end of turn.”
If you also count Old Fogey (7/7) from Unhinged (Nov 2004) then there are a total of nine cards with this ability. NINE! Only Nine cards ever printed with this ability yet eight of them they caused no end of headaches for 15 years (1994-2009) before the rules of this ability were finally changed.
“Bands with other” always follows a creature type.
Under the current rules all you need is one creature that has “bands with other [creature type]” and any number of creatures of that same type.
You control Seafarer’s Quay which grants your Hisoka, Minamo Sensei (1/3) additional rules text that reads “bands with other legends.” You also control Azusa, Lost but Seeking (1/ 2) and Karn, Silver Golem (4/4). Hisoka, Minamo Sensei can now form a band with these two other legendary creatures. The Seafarer’s Quay will let any number of legends dock their ship so long as the “Captain” of the ship so-to-speak is also a blue legend. All the other normal rules for attacking and blocking still apply, the only change here is which creatures can be in the band. In this example only legends can be in the band and at least one legend must be blue.
Under the old rules before the M10 rules change however, a creature with “bands with other [creature type]” could only form an attacking band with any other creatures that also had “bands with other [creature type]” or just had regular banding. So two green legendaries on the battlefield granted “Bands with other legends” from Adventurers' Guildhouse could join together in a band along with any other creature with the normal banding ability.
Unlike the current rules other legendaries on the battlefield that are not also green couldn’t join this band since the Adventurers' Guildhouse granted this ability only to your green legendaries in play. But other creatures that have the normal banding ability could join in with the other green legends in the Adventurers' Guildhouse as they already have banding.
The same on defence, multiple creatures with the same “bands with other [creature type]” ability, and any creatures with the normal banding ability can come together. But again, no creature without normal banding or creatures without “bands with other [creature type]” can join in.
So thus this created a situation where a legendary creature now granted the rules text that just reads “bands with other Legends”… Couldn’t actually band with a legend!
Unless of course that second legendary also had “bands with other Legends” granted to by virtue of being the same colour as stated in the rules text of the land that granted the ability.
So if Unholy Citadel is in play, then Veldrane of Sengir (5/5) can band together with Lady Orca (7/4), and both of them will also welcome other normal banding creatures such as Benalish Hero and Mesa Pegasus. But will exclude any and all non-black ledgendaries such as Kasimir the Lone Wolf (5/3), and any other non-banding creatures because the Unholy Citadel will only lets other black legendaries or those already with banding inside its doors.
Aside from legends of the same colour now being in exclusive clubs, granted membership by lands that didn’t actually produce any mana no less, there was only one other card with the “bands with other” ability printed: “bands with other Wolves of the Hunt,” on Master of the Hunt.
For the cost of 2GG each, Master of the Hunt can make a 1/1 green Wolves of the Hunt creature tokens that have “bands with other Wolves of the Hunt” on them.
Master of the Hunt also cost 2GG to cast so for 12 mana you can to cast Master of the Hunt and use his ability two times to get two 1/1 green Wolves that can only band with each other! So, no, these Wolves cannot band with their own Master!
To add to this absurdity that is “bands with other,” the remaining two cards with this actually printed could remove this ability.
Tolaria, a legendary land, that can at least tap for blue mana, can also be used to remove either banding or “bands from other” from a target creature until the end of turn… but only during your upkeep so you cannot even use it as a combat trick!
The remaining card, Shelkin Brownie, only had the ability to remove “bands with other” from a creature until end of turn.
Well that’s it on Banding and “Bands with others” but in regards to that it’s also interesting to note the legend rule in effect at the time: The first legend out on the battlefield was the only one allowed in play. That’s it. End of story.
Your opponent successfully casts Veldrane of Sengir and he’s now on the battlefield, you also have a copy of Veldrane of Sengir in your deck, in fact your copy in in your hand. But because there is already a copy of that legend out on the battlefield you cannot play your copy anymore. You can cast it of course, but the only result of this action is that you would have paid 7 mana (5BB) just to put your copy of Veldrane of Sengir into your graveyard!
Starting with Champions of Kamigawa (Oct 2004), “legend” stopped being a creature type, legendary became a supertype and it was no longer possible to make a creature into a Legend by changing its type.
The legend rule was also changed: if there are two or more legendary permanents with the same name out on the battlefield, they would all be put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action..
Legendary creatures no longer became dead cards in your hand if your opponent also has a legendary creature with the same name on the battlefield. You can cast yours to remove both from play.
And then again with the Magic 2014 core set release (July 2013) came the current legend rule in effect. Any time two or more legendary permanents with the same name are on the battlefield and they are controlled by the same player, that player must choose one of them and put the rest of those legendary permanents into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action.
Added to this was the “Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule” that says if a player controls two or more Planeswalkers that share a Planeswalker type, that player chooses one and the rest are put into their owner's graveyards as a state-based action.
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Only 8 basic lands in my new modern deck, all Islands.
Was called a monster for having four of them be white-bordered 7th Edition #334.
Also have white-bordered Urzatron lands (from Chronicles), that should somewhat make up for it right?
My playgroup’s answer: No, still a monster. :p
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Picture: Opened four of the five “Tangolands” so far. I’m still missing Smoldering Marsh.
I still don’t like the name “Tangolands.”
“Charm lands” is better IMO.
Yes, I know the name comes from the english idiom and saying “it takes two to tango,” and you do need to control at least two basic lands or they enter tapped..
But this should ideally be your third land drop, so I think a better name would be “Charm lands,” because the “third time's a charm.” Another english idiom, but one that makes more sense (to me at least) than the idiom the current name is based on.
Edit: So these have been called “Battle lands” on the WotC site, so I guess that’s the official name for them. Which I guess makes sense as a shortened form of “Battle for Zendikar Lands.”
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Finally have internet back.
More importantly we have our VOIP home phone line back.
Two days ago (Mon 21 Sep 2015) a paving contractor managed to damage and physically cut the cable line that was providing internet service to the house.
I live in a semi-detached home, I share the driveway with the neighbour and it was a mess, near the garage opening it was all sunken in and there were cracks with grass and weeds growing out of. So the neighbour found a paving company and we agreed to have them come out and redo the driveway. We paid $900 for our side and the neighbour paid about $1200 as they wanted a little extra work done. Their side of the driveway had ended with a wooden wall separating the grass from the asphalt, which they wanted replaced with some nice stone bricks.
The company came out about three weeks ago and dug up the old driveway and removed that wooden wall on the neighbour’s side without any problems.
Two days ago they came back to complete the work and put in the new asphalt. While they were doing what was needed to put in the new stone bricks the neighbour wanted on their side they also managed to dig up and cut a cable line at approx. 1:40pm.
Bam suddenly we have no internet, more importantly we have no VOIP Home Phone! My mom and dad are senior citizens at 70 and 86 respectively (Dad turns 87 in Oct) and with dad’s current health problems we need a working home phone line.
We’re paying a Third-Party ISP for both Internet and a VOIP Home Phone Line. The service is provided by Rogers Communications and the cable they cut belongs to Rogers.
So with cell phone in hand I tried calling Rogers, got connected to three representatives only to be told that because the name on our monthly bill isn’t Rogers they cannot help us. Called our Service Provider and they spend 20 mins having me check modem lights and if we had the correct power adapters plugged in, etc. and would only say that they had to follow procedure before they could send a repair tech out. Finally they said they would have to schedule a service call with Rogers to come out and we may have to wait until Friday!
By this point the paving company had finished and already left. I called their office, one of the workers that did our driveway picked up. I’m getting a runaround and delay with the calls I just made, they damaged the line, so I want them to get someone to fix it for us. They said they would call Rogers for us to explain and get a repair tech out. The paving company called me back about an hour later they got a service call scheduled today (Wed 23 Sep 2015) for us between 12pm to 2pm.
11:13am: Cell phone rings, it’s the Rogers technician and they should be here shortly.
Approx. 11:30am: noticed a red Rogers van outside, the technician has already started working.
11:56am: Temporary line installed, we have a working internet connection again, which means we have a working VOIP phone! The temporary line is currently suspended between two trees to get to the service box next to the road. The technician said that it could be between six to eight weeks before they get someone out to do a final repair in which they will bury the line underground. But for now, we got Internet back!
In the final picture below, you can see the new driveway, and a bit of the stone brick the neighbour wanted on their side:
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Free Stuff
It is Free Stuff Day!.. Or it is at my local game store. My LGS has an annual “Free Stuff Day”, where the first people in the door get at some free items while supplies last. These items are things that either they are not officially allowed to sell, or items that flopped and/or not selling.
This year they were giving out:
- 100 Upper Deck branded 9-pocket binder pages
- Two Magic 30-Card Sample Decks:
- One Magic Origins Sample Deck of your choice
- One Random M15 Sample Deck of their choice
- One SuperHeat Throwdown Starter Deck Case
- One SuperHeat Throwdown Booster Box
The binder pages look cheap, but seem to work fairly well. I will not using these pages in a trade binder any time soon, but for storing and organizing older cards, these seem to do the job okay. Also, I cannot find any information about these binder pages, or if this info does exist, my google skills have failed me.
For Magic, I came home with these two sample decks.
Wizards of the Coast has the deck lists on their website:
M15 Sample Decks: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1515
Magic Origins Sample Decks: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/magic-origins-sample-decks-2015-06-08
Okay, the big thing, SuperHeat.
What is SuperHeat? It is a “skateboard trading card game built by skaters for skaters.”
This game is really strange to me.
If you like skateboarding, would you rather go out, skate and do tricks on your board, or stay inside and play a TCG about skateboarding?
I have been going to this game store for about two years now, and in those two years I’ve always seen this SuperHeat game on the wall priced at $1 for a single Starter Deck and $8 for a whole Booster Box. Not really all that into skateboarding and I do not follow the world of pro skateboarding that this game is based on so I have never picked it up even with that cheap price.
Now? I have a whole Starter Deck Display Case with 10 Starter Decks, two each of the five starter decks and a complete Booster Box with 24-packs.
The goal of the game is simple enough, create the highest scoring line of connected tricks to win your “Heat”. Google searching does not bring up much information but this defunct game was apparently released only a few years ago on 27 July 2011 by Konami (the distributor) according to GameHead.com and the company that designed and marketed it, Super Heat Games has already closed its doors according to CrunchBase.com, and with the company closed the official website also no longer works.
I did however find two videos that show gameplay:
“GeekdomTV Gen Con 2011 -- SUPER HEAT TRADING CARD GAME”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4hb035a6fI
“Superheat Trading Card Game Demo”
https://vimeo.com/30358475
A YouTube search also reveals that SuperHeat had a booth and was showcased at the 2011 X Games.
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