Due to a family emergency, we're postponing the 2018 Weasel Royale Club Championship Game and Undercard to a Sunday to be determined in 2019. (Yes, we know that will present a naming challenge. But calendars are a social construct.) When the Royale happens, the players, in seed order, will be:

Game No. 378, played last night at the Red Lion in Lincoln Square, nearly didn't happen. One player, en route from afar, dropped after seeing that we had a seventh without him. But that seventh had never played before and was intent on merely spectating. Meanwhile, reliable standby Christian Kline was stuck at work and uncertain of his status.

"Maybe 50 percent," he told me at 4:35.

Fortunately, he got out in time to salvage the game, which was another tight match.

Playing Austria, Kline jumped out to eight centers in 1902 but was knocked back to six the following year. Bryan Pravel in Turkey grabbed the lead at eight in 1904, the penultimate year, but Ali Adib in England and Mick Johnson in France were on his tail with seven, and Kline still had six. That set up a classic final year, with all four players scrambling for the top.

The game ended by time limit after the Fall 1905 turn in the following center counts:

"All decisions made involving 12-packs work out."--Chris Glassburn

The 12th installment of our Weasel Moot, played September 1-2 in the meeting room at 400 East Randolph, Prime Weasel Brian Shelden's condo building, was like a party pack from your favorite brewer. There was enough variety to please every taste, including one game that only ended after the players were serenaded into submission at a Karaoke bar.

When the fog machine cleared, Eric Grinnell, on the strength of monster board-tops in the first two rounds, including a near solo as Austria in Round 2, was holding the brass ring. Grinnell was playing in his seventh Chicago tournament, and the win was the first of his long and colorful career. All hail the Alpha Weasel mu!

Christian Kline walked into his first Weasels game--No. 3 way back in January 2006--like a gunslinger. Later that year, in August, the player known as The Scorpion soloed at the first Weasel Pyle to claim the very first Weasel of the Year title. (In its first installment, the Pyle was known as Weasel Moot; we wouldn't attach that name to our premier tournament until the following summer.)

In 12 seasons since then, Kline hasn't stopped shooting. But while he has finished on the podium in our tournaments, topped more than 23 percent of his league games, and won Best Country awards, a second major title eluded him. In fact, the drought dragged on for so long that some wondered whether The Scorpion was trying to fashion his Dip career into a more natural habitat.

And then Tuesday's Bar Room Brawl Championship Game at the Red Lion in Lincoln Square happened.

The drought is now over. Let it rain.