Couples of the Geek
United States
Ithaca
New York
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LordDillon and I joined BGG together, and one of my first microbadges was the "My lover is also a BGG user". I have been noticing hints of "who goes with who" lately, on threads for how you manage a shared collection, to images of a daughter learning to play a certain game, to a picture of a wife cutting into a cake.
It would be neat to see the couples together, and hear stories of how you found each other and BGG.
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Francis K. Lalumiere
Canada
Brossard
Quebec
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Suzie Dumont
Canada
Montreal
Quebec
Suzie and I met at work almost six years ago.
Our relationship was strictly professional at first, and then it became friendly, and it eventually blossomed into [censored].
(See PornGeek.com for the full version)
So we've been together for three years now, but living in separate apartments: Suzie with her boy, and me with my three girls. But we're getting ready for a big move: on June 6th (on the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landing), out two half-families will merge into one big platoon in the new home we've purchased. We're all quite thrilled.
Now the funny thing is, Suzie HATED boardgames with a passion before she met me. To be fair, her experiences were pretty much limited to the games her brothers had forced her to play at gunpoint during her teen years: Risk, Monopoly... She also says that the ambiance around the table was pretty bad back then, which didn't help matters.
But when I was hired by the company she worked for, I started bringing (actual) games to work with me, and she gave one of them a shot (Elk Fest). And another (Exxtra). And another (can't remember...). Pretty soon she was spending each lunch break playing games with me and a few other geeks.
And when we fell in love and started to see each other outside of work, we often ended up spending entire evenings playing boardgames. Suzie kept working her way through my collection, became a serious Memoir '44 fan, and then I had her give C&C Ancients a shot. Oh man. It quickly became her favorite game ever, and we played it all. So much so that she eagerly awaits the release of each issue of C3i magazine for new scenarios (and, of course, we're very excited about the two new expansion sets coming this summer).
Pretty soon she had created her own BGG account and was coming to the site on a daily basis. I knew I had found true love.
Eventually, Agricola gave Ancients a run for its money in Suzie's heart, but the wargame bug won't let go. So apart from the ton of Euros we play all the time, we've played some Combat Commander (she wasn't thrilled), FAB: The Bulge, Hannibal,and about a hundred games of M44. The next one in line will probably be Hammer of the Scotts.
Suzie's also an abstract games maniac, and she'll play those over anything else the moment you tempt her. Be warned.
Oh, here's what my love looks like:
And here's me, during a playtest game of TZAAR.
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Bess D.
United States
Euclid
Ohio
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Steve and I met in 2001 through a friend. We got to know each other a little bit through same friend over the course of about a year. Then fiery burning trainwrecks occurred in our separate love lives, and out of the ashes of all that mess, our deepening friendship blossomed into a relationship, we moved in together about 2 months after we started dating, I proposed to him about 2 months after that, and 2 months after that, in January of 2003 we got married! We got married in a sushi restaurant, thus, Sushizock im Gockelwok... and also we love the Zoch Chicken games!
Us, a few days after we got married:
Here's Steve, btw:
Steve A.
United States
Euclid
Ohio
He avidly reads the BGG thriftlists, as do I. But mostly I get the task of publishing our thrifty finds, while he is usually the one who actually finds our thrifty finds. We also manage our collection on my account, arrange for trades on my account, etc.
We discovered BGG just this past spring (09) after I stumbled upon the usefulness of it's database in trying to find a unique game for my nephews. I started drooling over Agricola right away, but thought I should start with Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. Before I could pull the trigger on that, we picked up a copy of Castle Keep, which was a great hit, things snowballed quickly after that. We got, loved, and glitzed up our copy of Agricola:
We got into BattleLore, chronicled here BattleLore: How a couple went from zero to obsessed in just one play
Now we get together with a few other couples for regular gaming nights hosted by a very socially-inclined gaming friend in our area. We also go to a monthly gamers meetup at our local library:
We have rearranged our basement several times now to accommodate our rapidly growing game collection, and we usually game a few nights a week, and absolutely game a few times on the weekend.
It's a great new hobby we've found, and (not to be excessively cheesey), I'm really happy that I have such a great guy to share it with.
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Amy Muldoon
United States
New York
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Scott Muldoon (silentdibs)
United States
Astoria
New York
We met online. In the intertubes. We met after I had decided that online dating was just a punishment for all women because of Eve tempting Adam (or something similar) and had killed my account. So I had to give him my real name to look up on facebook, where my profile picture was of the San Diego Chicken eating a baby's head. If he was unperturbed by that, he'd actually have a chance. The fact that he was completely fine with it is why my avatar is this very chicken.
We spent days chatting on facebook like teenagers, only teenagers who talk about Keynesianism and global politics and equality etc etc. Basically 40 year old teenagers.
Then one day he said he had "boys night" every Tuesday, to which I naturally replied "Oh no. Strippers?" and he said "No. Worse. You'll wish it was strippers." Later that night I received a picture of him and 4 other guys around the biggest board game I had ever seen, with a million tiny pieces. I was intrigued.
And then I laughed and laughed and laughed. I had been the only girl in a couple D&D/RPG groups as an adolescent and I knew a crew of geeks when I saw one. And in this picture he was doing something I would come to know and love--he was explaining a rule. In fact he has what we call "the 'splainin' hand" which indicates you are about to learn an alternate rule, or about a corner case, or an insight into the designers intent.
Fast forward through the inevitable Settlers of Catan/gateway games anecdotes to today, 18 months later we are married and I list his games as mine on my profile. Thanks State of New York!
This is Scott moving in to my apartment last year with his 700 closest friends.
As for the Geek, since he has a desk job and I work outside, I often rely on Scott to keep me up on the Geek, and come home to links for threads I'd find interesting, or arguments he thinks I could contribute to. I write my own reviews and reports and GeekLists which is always really fun. When we were together a year he wrote a GeekList about year one of gaming together, it was super cute; last month he did a Geeklist to get me geekgold for a new avatar and I was inundated with gold! He got us badges for the Con at the last minute, and I think he was most happy when I was setting up my own games without him and making new buddies.
I think if I'd stumbled into this hobby some other way, I'd enjoy it, but because my partner is game explainer par excellence, it's become a really important part of my life and social network. He's even brought gaming into my milieu of activists who are always "too busy" to do anything...but now they find the time. There's basically no game I'm not willing to try or anyone I don't want to try gaming with because Scott's makes it so easy and fun.
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Lacombe
Louisiana
It was a dark and stormy night.
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Catherine Straight
United States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
That's us. 
Catherine and I met in our church during highschool.
We were friends for a few years before we started dating.
We dated from my freshman year at college to 4 1/2 years later.
We got engaged, then married 6 months later on our 5-year "anniversary".
We have been married now for 2 1/2 years, no kids... one cat.
We joined BGG before we were married, if I remember.
That's it, I guess.
Oh, yeah... here we are:
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Red Rook
United States
Tucson
Arizona
Something clever...
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Lisa Eskue
United States
Arizona
When Lisa and I first started dating we would play Stratego and other games at McDonalds. Since then, we've moved on to more current games, but one of our favorites has been Hive. Hive is perfect for restaurants and we often play it when we go out for sushi. We've pretty much played Hive to death and were looking for new games to play so I created this geeklist: Restaurant Games - My wife and I need new games to play at restaurants
BGGers are extremely helpful and offered many great suggestions. I've already purchased a few of the suggestions since the list was created and many of the others are now on my wish list. (We played Ingenious: Travel Edition last night and I look forward to taking it out to sushi.)
Lisa and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary in December and one of my gifts to her was Wasabi! to represent our love for sushi and gaming. Though it would not be convenient to play Wasabi in a restaurant, we've still enjoyed playing it at home.
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Железный комиссар
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
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I've been with my wonderful partner
Melissa
United States
Wisconsin
for over five years now. She actually remembers the days before BGG. 
Though not active on the site and not an avid gamer herself, she does enjoy enough games that I keep trying to find ones that fit her unpredictable tastes. Check out her ratings and see if you can solve the mystery!
Edit: I forgot that this photo was in my gallery.
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Krisztina Csikós= X-ta=
Hungary
Cegléd
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Gábor Iványosi-Szabó
Hungary
Kecskemét
Artax is my boy-friend for 9 month now, and we got to know each other on BGG! 
I was still living in Germany, and we accidentally got in contact on the site. He thumbed one of my pictures, and asked about it. We started talking and it turned out, that he has a board game shop, and he operates a board game club in Hungary. I started to help him editing the club's website and translate rules. And like this we slowly got to know each other and fell in love...
Now I'm living again in Hungary, and we're planing our little house (which will be fully optimized for gaming, and having a lot of space for all our games ).
The first game we ever played together was online Carcassonne (otherwise it would have been a bit difficult from that distance).
(Ups, I never thumb my own comments, it was by mistake.)
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33.
Board Game: Agricola
[Average Rating:8.25 Overall Rank:2]
Alex Treacher
United Kingdom
Hayes
Middlesex
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Keziah Herbert
United Kingdom
Hayes, Middlesex
The first few times we met were probably about as far away from a boardgame-related environment as it's possible to be, namely in busy London nightclubs where I was a photographer at the time. We met a few times over the space of a year or so, exchanged brief pleasantries and then got on with our work and enjoying respectively. I hadn't realised that this attractive young lady who seemed a little shy was harbouring a crush on me...
Eventually one evening Kez started chatting to me, ostensibly about my camera and photography. (Remember this was at a nightclub, so 'chatting' actually means shouting, trying to lip-read and generally gesticulating wildly!) We got on well, and chatted for quite a while and exchanged details. Not long after that we met to go to an exhibition together and got on extremely well.
It wasn't until five or six months later that our mutual interest in boardgames came to light. Kez had enjoyed boardgames with her family growing up and at university but hadn't been exposed to games heavier than Risk, Careers, Rat Race and the like. So, with little encouragement required, she started to join in our regular Tuesday Night Games sessions - I think we played Settlers for the first evening, being the traditional gateway game!
Kez became a member of BGG before I did, being far more into internet forums than I generally was, probably as a result of another member of our regular games group, Pum, being a member and referring to the site. Obviously it was only a matter of time before I joined up to, and it now seems hard to remember otherwise!
In addition to enjoying every moment of our time together when not boardgaming, we play a few two-player games at home (or on a plane at times), and usually game every Tuesday night at Pum's place. We've attended a few games cons together, notably StabCon and TringCon where we've met other BGG members, where we generally try to share a game or two if we can.
And why Agricola as the representative game on this list? It could equally have been Le Havre; two games that we all enjoy, yet Kez excels at, generally leaving the rest of us mere mortals squabbling over second place! Yes, those are our individually hand-painted Agricola mooples...
On another thread, Kez has already penned her answer to a similar question, So... How did you two meet?
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Kat Maxwell
United States
Michigan
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Bryan Maxwell
United States
Burtchville
Michigan
A Tale of Two Nerds
I was a geek years before my hubby and I met. I wasn't allowed much TV or video games growing up, but I played Diablo II and other video games, as well as RPGs (D&D and Wheel of Time) with a group of guys from high school through college. Bryan got lucky and was nerdy from the get-go with pinball machines, arcades, MtG, and lots of video games.
Bryan and I met in November of 2003 through the interwebs, a website where you can take quizzes for fun, and it also matches you with people who have similar tastes/answers, and if you're interested in someone's profile, you pay $20 to get their email address. I wasn't on it for a dating site, but lo and behold I get an email from Bryan, stating that he got an email that said we were 100% compatible. We had many similar interests, and grew up not to far from each other, now living within in 15 minutes. I thought about it for a while, then emailed him back my cell phone number. I was in the process of moving, and wouldn't have internet access. I get settled in my new place, and as I'm sitting on my floor playing Diablo II, my phone rings. It's a number I don't recognize, but I answer. It's Bryan! First thing I notice is his voice is deep and sexy, a very interesting conversation indeed. Here's the gist:
Kat:Hello?
Bryan: Is this Kat?
Kat: Yes, who's this?
Bryan: This is Bryan.
*We exchange awkward, excited hellos*
Kat: Um, can you hold on a second? I'm about to die.
Bryan: What are you playing?
Kat: Diablo II.
Bryan: *very quietly* I love you...
After the longest conversation of both our previous lives, we decide to meet at a local coffee shop a day or two later. I, of course, had dressed to impressed, and he, in his long-haired, dark eyed way swept me off my feet the moment we met. We've been together ever since. He proposed in 2005 around Christmas, in the middle of our kitchen while I was still in my PJs. We were married April 2006, finding out we were pregnant a mere 2 days before the wedding! (Woops! ) Now Avery is 3, and I'd like to add to the geek population sometime soon! And it's been happily ever geekdom since.
Bryan found BGG through GenCon (where we also got into board gaming, thanks to Settlers). He bought Carcassonne: The Discovery thinking it was regular Carcassonne, but to his dismay, it wasn't. Upon looking for information, he found BGG and was quickly addicted. I was hesitant at first. I felt I didn't have anything cool or fun to say, and I wouldn't have anything to contribute. Now, I just have more confidence, and I guess I just fell in love with the BGG community.
We don't have many pictures together, as I am usually (happily) behind the camera, but here's one I don't hate
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Pete Lane
United States
Saint Paul
Minnesota
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After years of unsuccessful dating rituals, I finally decided that I needed to find someone as geeky as I was and that I would find a best friend and someone who would enjoy the same hobbies as I do. Needless to say, I was smitten with a girl who's interests included Discworld and Settlers of Catan...
Sarah
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
We were married a couple years afterword, and often have all day gaming events with friends and other couples in our home filled with our cute animals. In fact, most of our gaming friends are couples, so we often find ourselves enjoying life to the fullest.
She's not on BGG much since I've taken an effort in cataloging our games and plays and it would be redundant info. But, it's an 80% chance that any plays I list include both of us at the same table.
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GMOFreePortland.com
United States
Happy Valley
Oregon
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Mary Wright
United States
Oregon
Mary and I have known each other since 1986. I was a senior in high school and played guitar in the jazz band. People would see me carrying my guitar around school and ask me if I knew Mary, "that girl who plays guitar". Even though we had a lot of mutual friends, we hadn't met. We finally became acquainted late in the Spring of '86, shortly before I graduated. She was a sophomore, so it would be a couple years before she graduated. Three years later, I was a junior at Oregon State. One day I was leaving chemistry when I heard my name called down the hall. It was Mary. We started hanging out together the rest of that year, just being friends. She only went to Oregon State for the one year. She then moved back to Portland. I graduated a couple years later and moved back to Portland myself. We kept in contact over the years, but only as friends. We would both go through a number of relationships in that time, but never would we both be single at the same time.
In 2007, I met a guy named Rob at a jam session in Vancouver, WA. I told him about an open mike night in SE Portland. He started showing up at the open mike. As we got to know each other better, we discovered that we had gone to high school together. We just didn't know each other then. A few weeks later, Mary showed up at the open mike. Turns out that Mary and Rob had been best friends since junior high! It was that surprise meeting that allowed Mary and I to renew our friendship. About a year later, she invited me and some other friends to get together for her birthday. We decided to go out the next night to watch a friend's show. That night we realized that we wanted to be with each other. We've been together ever since. We were wed just last month, on 10/10/10. The avatar that I am currently using is from our wedding. We both wrote songs for each other and performed them at the reception. The song I wrote is titled, "That Girl Who Plays Guitar", and basically tells the story I have written here.
As to the game I chose for the entry. A couple years ago, we stopped at Bridgetown Hobbies here in Portland. Bridgetown has two sides to the store, one for models, the other for games. I needed something for one of my model car projects. While I was looking, Mary went over to the game section. She picked up India Rails and told me all about the Empire Builder series. She bought India Rails and pulled Empire Builder and other games out of storage. All this time she was a gamer girl and I didn't know it! Mary isn't as active here on the geek as I am, but she is my most frequent gaming partner.
I Love that Girl who plays guitar!
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Lisa Miller
United States
Longmont
Colorado
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My other half...
Dan Miller
United States
Longmont
Colorado
Klaron grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin. My parents moved me from sunny warm Florida to this tiny freezing town during my sophomore year of HS. Klaron was a senior so I did not meet him in high school.
As I was preparing to go off to college, my grandparents took me shoe shopping in the mall. Klaron was working that day and sold me a pair of shoes. This was back in the day when they measured your foot and then would put the shoe on your foot...like the Prince & Cinderella. Little did I know that he would end up being my prince charming
Fast forward a few years, I had gone off to college, ran off to NYC to be a nanny, lived in Chicago with my grandparents for a year before finally returning back to Wisconsin. We would see each other around and finally we hooked up. After a month of dating, he asked me to marry him!! We got married on 10-10-92. (He picked that day for our wedding because the Packers had a by-week)
We were very poor when we first got married so going out really wasn't an option. So we spent a lot of time at home playing board games. My grandparents bought us Rail Baron and we played the heck out of that game. We also played a lot of Huggermugger and North American Rails. We also played the usual suspects such a Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary.
Living in Wisconsin made it easy for us to attend GenCon. My first trip was in 1994. At the time we really didn't go there so much for the board games as much for the roleplaying. My hubby (a real geek) introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons. If you can believe this, I had never even heard of it until I met him. At first I resisted playing it, but eventually I caved in. I was totally hooked after our first session...a new geek was born 
It wasn't until we moved out to Colorado in 1998 that we really got into board games. I mean we always played games, but things started to get serious. My hubby met this guy at his job (he's also on bgg...LordTennyson1971) and he introduced us to Settlers of Catan. It was then that we discovered that there were so many awesome games out there that we had never heard of. It was time to start expanding our game collection!! Now we had a whole other reason to attend GenCon.
We have sets of friends that we play pretty regularly with but we have a lot of games that can be played with just 2 players. It's become a criteria now when buying games that they can be played with 2 players. When you have over 300 games, you want to be able to play them without finding a third or 4th person all the time.
In July 2009, I almost lost my best friend and gaming buddy. He passed out while driving & hit a concert wall at nearly 60 miles per hour!!! He broke both arms, broke one ankle, and sprained the other very badly. He spent a week in ICU. I believe that he got off pretty lightly due to the fact that he was passed out. After he came home from the hospital, I convinced him that we had to go to GenCon since we had already paid for the hotel, plane tickets, and badges. Talk about devotion to a hobby, less than 1 month after the accident we were at GenCon. Not only did I have my hubby to take care of but we had to bring our 5 year old with us too. I had my hands full to say the least, but we did enjoy ourselves and came home with some great games.
Klaron found boardgamegeek while trying to find more information about a game. He signed up as a user and I usually used his account. But 2 years ago I decided that I wanted to keep track of all the games we played so I signed up and was completely taken by surprise by the generousity of everyone. Out of the blue, 2 people saw that I was a new user and game me enough geekgold to get an avatar I feel like I should pay it forward and help out a new user to get theirs (technically I did give my hubby enough gg so he could get his avatar).
I picked Rail Baron for the picture because I always look back fondly on all the time we spent playing that game when we were first married. Several years ago my hubby sold it on ebay because we really didn't play it anymore. But now we both are sorry as the day is long about getting rid of it. Someday I am hoping to find a copy of it somewhere, so we can once again play it and remind ourselves how lucky we are to have a gaming partner for life.
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Raiko Puust
Estonia
Keila
Harju Maakond
Raiko & Agnes Forever! Feel the Love and Feel the Warmth. Happiness is 2 hugs plus 3 kisses every hour...:D (http://mrboardgames.wordpress.com/)
Addicted Estonian gamer with big heart and direct winning attitude. Need any help with something, just ask. Need some GG for something, just ask. Need something to be translated, just ask. Meanwhile, behave! :D (http://mrboardgames.wordpress.com/)
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Me and Agnes:
I think that by now, some people here should be familiar wit us. We play together and do everything together!
I love her a lot.
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Juan Medina
United States
Cibolo
Texas
Property of LunaClara
Board games rule my life, and my wife's. That is a good thing, believe it or not ;)
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This is my beautiful wife, with whom I have discovered the world.
Ana Forero
United States
Cibolo
Texas
We met at the church choir, and dated for a few fun years. Played a ton of RPGs during that time, mostly D&D. We also had a huge collection of Spellfire cards. She was the beautiful female halfling warrior (DEX 17, CHA 18, WIS 15) to my scoundrely half-orc thief ways (INT 8, WIS 5, LUCK 20).
Eventually we just could not stand the thought of each other being apart (e.g. our parents were getting annoying) and tied the knot. It was the most awesome day ever. That picture was taken inside the car after the ceremony when were on our way to the celebration party. Yep, we were happy.
For some time it was all about working, getting a better life, having fun with the rest of the family, particularly my awesome mother-in-law. We did not play too many board games. We went to the "Family Growth" space plenty of times, two of them being successful! Little meeples made their way into our lives.
Years passed and we finally found our way back into the hobby. Found a copy of Talisman (fourth edition), closely followed by one of Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game and rekindled our love for games. You always go back to those things that you enjoyed when you were dating! We got our Spellfire collection back, played some D&D, and got the kids involved. I did not plan on it, but having kids makes playing board games so much easier.
Yes, we managed to amass a sizable amount of games, or as like to call them "cardboard happiness". The good thing about being married to a board gamer is you get a lot of board games. The bad thing about being married to a board gamer is you get a lot of board games.
Well, she still looks as beautiful as when I met her, and I managed to get uglier, but over all kinds of things we stuck together. More games await to be bought, played, sleeved, shelved, played, shared, played again.
Meeples wait for nobody.
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Tegs
Australia
Canberra
ACT
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My fiance' is
He doen't actually use BGG much, though he does have an account.
We met in 2000, while in our last year of highschool and started dating in 2002. We're now coming up to our 10 year anniversary together and are engaged to get married next year!
This is me:
and this is Cluan:
We discovered the boardgaming hobby together around 2009 (you can see the story on my profile page), though I've fallen a little deeper into the rabbit-hole than him .
You can see a recent tribute I made to our relationship in this Valentines Day Geeklist: A Boardgaming Madrigal - Or, Yay, my fiancé shares my addiction!
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Posted Thu Apr 9, 2009 2:23 pm
Clearly, a match made in Heaven. Thanks for sharing! I also admire how none of you *let* the other one win by default. Now, I just need to get into a game of 
You mentioned threads for how you manage a shared collection. That sounds very interesting.
Can you point to some of those?
Centennial
Colorado
Woking
Surrey
All my fantasies in one! It will have to wait then...
Everett
Washington
Happy Valley
Oregon
Valentine's Day Avatar Contest (Winner Chosen!)