Your first impression is probably "What is this piece of junk I see before me?"
Well, it's actually a quite interesting card. In Yu-Gi-Oh!, it's from the Thousand Eyes Bible set, but even before that, this little ship was the ship in Konami's hit arcade game, Gradius.
However, that's just background. An easy rule in a card game is this: a card becomes better when there is a specific card that refers to it. Well, Vic Viper has two cards that are meant to work solely with it.
The first card is LN-44: Cyclone Laser, an equip magic card from the Labrinth of Nightmare set. It can only be equipped on Vic Viper. Vic gets 300 extra attack, and whenever he attacks a defense-position monster with a lower defense, the difference of the two values is dealt to your opponent's life. This card, however, isn't going to get Vic Viper very far alone.
Mythological Age brings us the card that makes Vic Viper useful. MA-10: Option is a monster that can only be special summoned when you choose a Vic Viper in play. The Option gains the current statistics of Vic Viper, and if Vic Viper leaves play, so Option gets destroyed. Can you see how this all relates to the game Gradius?
In any case, the great thing about Vic Viper is the fact that he comes with special summons. Special summons allow you go get ahead in the game, getting larger monsters faster, and quickly over-powering your opponent. Toss out Vic Viper and an Option first turn and you can sacrifice them both for a Blue-Eyes on turn 2. Or in a luckier situation, play a single Vic Viper and 3 Options to overwhelm your opponent.
Remember that the Options copy the current statistics of Vic Viper, as opposed to the base statistics of Vic Viper. This means that if Vic Viper has a Cyclone Laser, the Options attack value will be 1500. However, a smarter play would be to give Vic Viper a Demon's Axe which will provide him with 2200 attack.
This was meant to be an alert of sorts to English players. Vic Viper comes out in an early set, and alone it is a card that people would be inclined to put in their "trash monsters" pile of cards. However, hold onto it, and know that once Mythological Age comes out that it will actually be useful. Heck, who knows, maybe it will be valuable because everyone else ripped theirs up.
Once again, I hope you enjoyed learning about this card in Card Discussion!
