The Moldy Crow: by The Suboken Brick Projects (Travis Hiner)

This LEGO set idea is based on the starship and characters featured in the 1995 LucasArts video game Star Wars Dark Forces and its 1997 sequel, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

The Moldy Crow:

The unique look of this starship helped make it a fan favorite in the Star Wars gaming community. During my first play-through of the game, I found The Moldy Crow's design enigmatic and fascinating. Figuring out how to build a version of starship using LEGO was as much fun as playing the video games it was featured in.

Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors:

The main character of both games, and owner of The Moldy Crow, was a mercenary named Kyle Katarn. In Dark Forces, Katarn was contracted by The Rebel Alliance to perform difficult jobs against the Galactic Empire. During his adventures he teamed up with Jan Ors who often piloted The Moldy Crow, helping Katarn escape from some sticky situations.

In the 1997 sequel, Katarn starts down a path to becoming a Jedi. Before the game’s final conflict, The Moldy Crow is destroyed during a climatic escape sequence.

About the set:

This was my first MOC and was built in 2010. Our family’s LEGO building passion started with building classic Star Wars star-fighter LEGO sets. Once we had a decent representation of both Imperial and Rebel fighters, we realized that we needed some "rogue" ships to balance out the collection. At the time the only two LEGO sets available were Han Solo's Millennium Falcon and Boba Fett's Slave 1. The Moldy Crow immediately came to mind as a great ship to add to our collection.

While searching online for references of the ship, two color schemes were often presented. Most of the in-game screen shots leaned towards using Dark Tan as the ship's primary color. However, several custom made illustrations and model kits presented The Moldy Crow using rust colors, similar to LEGO's Dark Orange bricks. I decided to use the Dark Orange color scheme because it looked better amongst our other Star Wars sets, and because (at the time) LEGO pieces available in Dark Orange had the specific shapes I was looking for.

Starship build features:

full cockpit that seats both Katarn and Ors minifigures

retractable landing gear

365 º rotating turret

rotating turret high swooshabilty

To see more examples of custom LEGO sets my wife and I have created, please visit The Suboken Brick Projects on Flickr, and The Suboken Brick Projects on MOCPages.

Proposed Set Includes:

The Moldy Crow starship set

Kyle Katarn minifigure

Jan Ors minifigure

Two Dark Forces Stormtrooper minifigures