Painted City Canal and Harbour System Available!

Hello everyone!

Enjoy the possibilities of an awesome Urban board!

After long preparations, we are proud to present the final version of the Pedion City Canals, as well as the Harbours, which complement our extensive Urban tile battlefields! Read more on how you can get yours.

The Urban Kickstarter Pledge Manager is Live - and you can Late-Pledge!

The "Pledge Manager" is the tool for our Urban Kickstarter Backers to finalise their pledges, select their Urban battlefields Rewards and arrange their shipping details so they can get them on May 2018. But, on the same time, is a chance for people who were late, to jump on the Kickstarter train and pre-order Urban Battlefields with the same benefits and pricing (what we call "late-pledge"). The Pledge Manager works as an integral part of our Pedion eshop, and you can check the Urban options there!

What's new in the Eshop then?

As part of the Kickstarter "Pledge Manager", people gain access to pre-ordering many exciting new designs to enhance their Urban or Outdoors Pedion Sets. Specifically:

CITY CANALS & HARBOURS

A full 3'x3' Urban setup with "Medieval" Harbours, Canals, roads and bridges!

During the Urban KS Campaign we had shown only the "Medieval" version of the Harbour quays, and have shown schematics of the Canal tiles. In the Pledge Manager City Canals and City Harbours are separate entries with almost all available separate designs and themes shown in the galleries so you can better understand the way they look.

City Canal "T" Junction, "Contemporary" theme

Straight and Stepped Quays Harbour Tiles in a row, "Contemporary" theme

Canal Harbour Exit Tile, "Medieval" Theme

The "City Canals" KS Special Offer set

I must stress that these are not simple prototypes but actual products with parts cast in resin from the moulds we have already made.

CANAL BRIDGES

We had announced the additions of Bridges to cross the City Canals in a KS Update, and we have already shown you the "Medieval" Stone Bridge. You will find both the Stone and Asphalt bridge in the PM

Stone Bridge on "Road Overpass" canal tile, "Medieval" Theme

Asphalt road Bridge on "Road Overpass" canal tile, "Contemporary" Theme

MORE TRANSITION OPTIONS

We expanded the "Transition" tile designs with another featuring a straight road, which was requested by many: the "Transition Straight Road- Along". It allows to fully go over from one Pedion theme to another, be it Urban or Outdoors, or a combination of them. The same can be done (without the road) with the "Open Ground Transition"

TRANSITION Tile "Open Ground" Green Spring to Desert Theme

CUSTOM MOSAIC DESIGNS ON "OPEN SPACE" TILES

That's something completely new, not presented during the KS: we can engrave and paint a customised design on a "Open Space" tile.The idea is that by ordering an Open Space tile with Custom design, we can engrave a special mosaic to adorn your battlefields. It can be a motif which will make the urban set look the role for specific game universes or scenarios. And, you can always remove it and use a standard open space tile in its place when you play a different game or world (something not possible with other urban boards which have fixed designs).

The custom design will be engraved and detailed on the tile, and then hand painted to stand out. It can act as a building floor, a mosaic, a Scenario Objective area, or just an adornment. We have prepared three (3) different designs we can engrave in your tiles, but you can always ask for something else. You can see in the gallery and ordering options how we can implement an "Arcane Pentagram" (for your Fantasy Games), a Helipad/dropship pad (for modern and scifi scenarios) and even an Imperial Eagle (for scifi Cathedrals). You can order one of these 3 designs or you can send us your own.

Arcane Pentagram on Medieval Theme open space tile

Need a floor for that ruined Imperial 40K Cathedral?

Replacing a Set's "open space" tile with a "custom" one opens up all kind of scenario possibilities!

If you want us to implement a custom design of your own making, you can get an idea from the 3 we already have whether it is feasible or not. The design must be drawn in some detail (no oral descriptions qualify) and must fit an area of maximum 20cm in diameter.

MAGNETIC ACCESSORIES 

Another thing we had talked about in the KS but had not shown: a series of accessories and scenics which could make use of "Magnetised" tiles. The idea is that they stand upright realistically, without using any bases, and they do not fall even if you flip the tile. In the "Urban Accessories (Magnetic Base option)" PM sub-section, you will find many of these, including our new walls, fences, urban trees, flower beds, city sculpts, traffic lights and street lamps.

Street lamps, traffic lights and Wirefence combined on a Magnetised tile. They need no bases and they don't fall over.

An "Old-fashioned" Street lamp - works great both on "Medieval" and "Modern" City terrain sets

Earthquake? not a problem! Your Street lamp stays in place

DISCOUNT -10% ON ALL OUTDOORS BASE SETS

Last but not least: in case you were considering getting one of the outdoor sets from our first Kickstarter, here is your chance. While the Urban KS Pledge Manager is active, all the "Outdoors" Base Battlefield Sets (from 2'x3' to 6'x4') are at 10% OFF! Even single extra tiles like crops, craters, coastlines etc are at 5% OFF. We will combine shipping with your urban pledge, although each outdoors set will add a bit to the delivery time (check their descriptions).


I am quite proud of how the Urban line is growing and how great it looks! Just give us the chance to create the urban board you always wanted.

George

Journal #5 - or, Into the Dark Forest

Ready to see more of my prototype tiles for Pedion™? It's time to show you what I have in mind for my Forests - and I think you will find it pretty ambitious.

A short recap: as mentioned in my previous posts, I intent each and every one of my 30x30 cm (1'x1') tiles to represent a unique feature, to act as a special battlefield characteristic. This will add variation to your terrain, and allow you to add or subtract tiles depending on your battle scenario layout (or your wargaming whim!). Terrain features are not intended to be placed upon Pedion tiles (not that you could not do this with terrain you may already own), but are actually part of the tile itself. This allows  for better and realistically looking terrain, not to mention some specific capabilities built into the tiles. On post #4 I started presenting these particular tile categories by showing the simpler and more numerous Plain Grass and Broken Ground Tiles.

Now we move on to what I call Forest Tiles.

Heracles fighting the centaur Nessus in a Pedion Forest - minis are actually 32mm toy figures stolen from my son

The concept of "Forest" tiles is really simple but innovative: dedicate an area on a tile (covering most of its surface) as forest/difficult terrain. This area is not only painted differently but will also be magnetically enabled, to add trees and other forest features on top. The main characteristics of the Forest tiles are:

• The players may place the Forest tiles anywhere in a Pedion™ battlefield, or adjacent to each other, creating a larger forest: the "forest" borders are drawn in such a way to connect on one side!
• The "forest"area on each tile is defined by color and textures, and can be declared by the players to act as Forest, Difficult Terrain, or Cover Terrain, depending on their wargaming rules. The "forest" area DOES NOT PROTRUDE from the neighboring terrain, but feels completely as a part of it. Therefore, miniatures and Unit bases do not have to "climb" when entering the forest, as is the case with most forest pieces in the market.
• The defined area is also magnetically enabled (either by metal "hard-points" either painted with magnetic primer). Thus, the player can place on top any kind of terrain feature -like trees, bushes, logs, rocks- with magnetic bases. The tiles are designed this way in order to allow for a) aesthetic placement, b) different sizes of trees in case of smaller scales, and mainly c) enable the players to remove only the trees that are in the way of their units movement or placement, without either ruining the whole forest nor trying to fit the miniatures in the spaces among the trees. The magnetic connections is strong enough to protect the trees from scattering when the tile is moved accidentally.
• The metal hard-points allow for declaring the Forest tiles as other kinds of terrain, depending on your rules. For instance, by placing rock formations or bushes with magnetic bases, you can declare the tile as Cover terrain.

The borders of the forested area on the tiles are not randomly drawn but are digitized from real forests' borders near rural areas, as shown on satellite images. Two main Forest tiles are designed, which can either be used independently, or -as mentioned- can be combined into a larger forest.

To create the magnetically enabled area, I tried two methods: placing metal hardpoints (coins) in various places and painting the whole area with magnetic primer. I used one method on the first tile and the other on the second type of tile. After caulking, painting, flocking etc, it seems that placing some kind of metal produces a better, more stable method, as the hardpoints remain strong enough for the magnet bases to snap unto.

Let me show you the development of the tiles themselves over some photos:

The two types of forest tiles, with the adjoining forest shapes - one has the metal coins to attract the magnet bases

Basecoating - the grey on the left is the magnetic primer

Texturing - tree bark and filler are combined for the larger rock foramtions

Drybrushing and Flocking - you can glimpse the metal circular areas for the trees to snap onto.

The second tile is ready - it looks great but the magnetic primer does react that strongly to magnets under all the paint layers and flocking

The two prototypes look good, much better actually than what you can see in the pictures. However, I would try to define the border of the magnetized area more strongly, as now it seems to blend with the surrounding grass. Though is looks amazing and realistic, these tiles will be used for wargaming and the players must know exactly when the forest/cover area stops.

After the tiles, it was time to create overhead forest features, like trees. As I said above, the forest tiles can be used for a variety of tree scales and even for non-forest features like rock formations. For my prototype I created mostly trees, of different sizes, and some extra forest floor features, like bushes, rocks, fallen logs etc, if the players want to add variety and some rise and falls to the forest floor.


The trees are ready made, mostly from Noch. I sculpted polystyrene foam bases for them, to fit the rear earth magnets underneath, which were painted, dry-brushed and flocked. Check my efforts in the pictures:

The tree trunks are inserted and glued to sculpted  foam bases 

Preparing some trees for smaller scale (15mm or less) games

Inserting and gluing rear earth magnets

Preparing forest floor decoration pieces

Texturing

Finished trees and forest features - goblin warrior for scale!

The trees also came out great. Their only problem is that sometimes the magnet may come off when attracted to the metal forest floor - so I will probably keep it in place by covering the whole base with tape.

If anything, the trees and forest stuff come too good - that is, they take too long to make. Since the each tile sports quite a large forest area, it needs a lot of trees to look realistic. Six (6) trees would be the absolute medium, and only for scales like 20mm to 28mm. Therefore, I have to take note and accelerate the tree-making process, or the forest tile cost will rise disproportionately.

Check out some photos of how the Forest tiles look populated with trees and bushes, especially when the two tiles are joined next to each other.

So, let's suppose that you are using the beautiful Pedion™ Forest Tiles, full of trees, for your battle. In the pictures below a sample unit of goblin archers reaches on its round the forest...

(just some old Games Workshop goblins)

On its round, the unit moves 6" into the forest - no problem! No climbing, and all the player has to do is remove for a bit any trees or features in the way.

Next round, and the unit left the forest. Putting the trees back is no fuss

Forest tiles are good terrain features, and those tiles cover all the requirements I had for Pedion. However, I am not sure every battlefield commander will want forest tiles - so I will probably not add them into basic Pedion™ configurations. This will help to keep the overall cost low.

When adding a forest tile, it will include at least six tree stands - and you can always add more trees or different features in the future, even ones you already own.

As always, I do want your opinions, comments and ideas. And more tile categories will be presented in future blog posts - stay tuned. Till then, good gaming all!

Journal #4 - or, Time to show them Grass Tiles!

I feel that the time has come to -drum roll- stop bombarding you with walls of text and show you some actual Pedion™ tiles! Keep in mind: everything you will see in this and future relative posts are prototypes, what you would call a "Work in Progress" (or WIP). But they come quite close with what I envision the final product will be, so you will get the idea, and see more of my progress.

Adventurers ambushed by Goblins on Plain Grass and Broken Ground Pedion Tiles
(miniatures included for show only, manufactured by Reaper and WotC, painted by me and +Tasos Leontarakis) 

As established in all previous posts, Pedion™ tiles will be 30x30cm squares. My approach towards Modularity is that each Tile will fulfill a Specific Battlefield Role. While Pedion™ can act as a battle mat where players put terrain objects on top, its design is such that each tile will include specific terrain features as its integral part - at least, natural terrain features like rivers, rocks, forests, hills etc.

Therefore, each Pedion™ Tile will have a base Use declaration, and an appropriate design. Expect to see Hill Tiles, Forest Tiles, Road Tiles, River Tiles, Difficult ground Tiles, Orchard Tiles, Plain Tiles, Elevation change Tiles and so on!

With this blog post, I start a series of presentations of the Tile types which will be available for Pedion™. And I will begin by describing two of the most commonly found kinds: what I call Plain Grass Tiles and Broken Ground Tiles. Fear not, it will be more "photo gallery" than "text description" ;)

A Plain Grass & Broken Ground tile layout in 3' x 4' formation

These tiles will consist, as you may imagine, the bulk of any Pedion™ configuration, and will cover most of your table. They are also quite straightforward to produce, so I will be showing them together.

Plain (Grass) Tiles

The so-called plain tile will be the most common type of them all, lacking any complex terrain features. Its purpose is to represent open ground, which usually imposes no penalties or modifiers to unit movement. It can also act as a base for any extra terrain pieces (like buildings) the players already have and want to include in their game.

Plain Tiles will vary depending on the prevailing terrain and weather conditions of the battlefield - they can be snowy plains, sandy deserts, urban concrete flats or exotic grey sci-fi valleys. However, I believe that most gamers, myself included, usually find their armies in grassy plains, and this is the design I started from. The main characteristic all the Plain Tiles will share is their flat surface. Not the most realistic state, but suitable for miniature movement in wargaming!

The Plain Grass Tiles are designed to be quite straightforward to make (ie not much to show you here). After prepping the tiles, a neutral earth basecoat will be applied, and they will be generously flocked with grass. I prefer the Spring Meadow tone of static grass from Noch for its natural looking color. Choosing the flocking type of the plain grass mats is important: this static grass will need to be present in every other kind of tile, especially at the tile borders, in order to achieve an unified look when interconnecting them together.

As an alternative to earn some production time (while it costs more) I decided to cover Plain Grass Tiles with 30 x 30 cm sheets of pre-flocked static grass mat. Again, Spring Meadow grass mats from Noch look and behave great. One of the advantages of gluing pre-cut grass mats (aside from it being much quicker) is the fact that I plan to cut the grass sheets with a few (1-2) mms extra on each side. The extra ribbon of grass can be used to cover the seam between the grass tile and neighboring tiles.

By the way - even premade grass mats shed an enormous amount of static grass! I found out that I could collect bags of the stuff that just fell off. This also meant I should seal the the grass tiles, probably with watered down PVA, to stop it from continuously shedding in your houses...

Broken Ground Tiles

Plain grass tiles put next to each other produce a single, solid green plain area... also known as a "golf course". Each battlefield will need some more variety, and thus I created the Broken Ground tiles.

These Pedion™ tiles can be used in a variety of ways. You can use them just to provide aesthetic variation between plain tiles. But they can offer much more: they can be declared as broken/difficult ground in the battlefield, imposing any special modifiers and penalties your game system associate with this type of ground. Players can decided to declare as difficult ground the whole of the 30x30 tile, or just inside the parts painted with a more earthen appearance.

Broken Ground tiles are again mostly flat -with the exception of some low rock features- to allow unit movement and any additional terrain object placement. They will be flocked/painted to correspond and blend with the rest of the battlefield type. For instance, my prototype Broken terrain tiles where painted to combine with the Plain Grass tiles.

Broken Ground Tiles require more involvement in their preparation, as well as multiple waiting periods for the various paint layers to fully dry. Check these images for a step-by-step presentation:

Texturing

Flocking

Checking layout configurations

Detail: checking ribbon overlay to hide seam

Basecoating

Drybrushing

Low rocky features

More flocking - details, to make tile look realistic

Combining with plain grass tiles

Next to some Road tiles

Hope you like the result. My aim is to create a number of varied "Broken Ground" tiles to recreate an interesting -albeit flat- looking battlefield.

During the above procedure I learned some valuable lessons, sometimes the hard way (unfortunately). Suffice it to say, I can now make broken ground tiles in a more efficient and time-saving way, which does not include multiple flockings, and it certainly does not involve instant coffee powder to resemble gravel (don't ask...).

Plain Grass and Broken Ground Tiles will be a major part in every Pedion™ configuration. I would include about 6 Plain Tiles to every 4' x 4' or 4' x 6' battlefield, and probably the same number of Broken Ground tiles. However, I would like to hear/read your opinions on the matter!

Please do comment, the whole purpose of this blog is to get your feedback and build a better Pedion. Also, share these posts with people who you think could also help. And of course stay tuned, for more tile-showing posts, like my Road Tiles.

Good Gaming All!

Journal #1 - or, What I need from a modular terrain board?

So, this is my first post - my ramblings on creating a terrain board to play my wargames on, and my decisions that will shape (pardon the pun) the final form of the Pedion (tm) terrain tiles.

Please, whomever happens upon these lines, please bear with me: I am neither a native English speaker, nor have I written any kind of fan-blog entries before. And for any Greek speakers, please use the "translate" button on the right, hope it will help!

How it started? By giving into my desire to play as many wargames as possible. And I do not mean board wargammes, with chits, counters and hex boards, but the "paint-field-move-miniatures' army" kind. My friends will know I am an avid role player but I did not play wargames at home, and wanted to start doing so.

The painter-modeler in me wanted an appropriate battlefield to place my armies. I can live with playing with book stacks, boxes and rubbers, it is perfectly fine - it just ruins the experience for me, as it does for many people I guess.

Another common problem is that I do have a table, which is large and sturdy enough. However, living in a flat, that means the table rests in the living room (or the kitchen or someplace equally non-game friendly) and not in a play-room or garage. Therefore, I could not create a magnificent one- or two-piece terrain board, and put it there permanently (or even semi-permanently) without disrupting my domestic life (read: my wife would crucify me).
Actually, space is a commodity that I find exceptionally dear in a flat, as do many of you: terrain boards and big feature pieces, while so cool looking, need some place to store. And they take a LOT of room, usually far away from where you need them most; that is, the living room table (again, storing them next to china and crystals proves ...unhealthy).

Why the long intro? So you can understand what led me to stating the requirements further below. Keep in mind - I would kill to have some of those incredibly looking, large an heavy terrain boards/tables where I could easily game in no time. But having only a living room table and limited storage space, I have to find something that suits me.

Being not the first into such dire straights, there are a number of solutions for gamers like me. They can be generalized into three broad categories:

1. the flat, printed board; either on plain plotter paper, cardboard or vinyl you may now print battlefield 2D pictures with reasonable cost, even for large sizes like 6'x4' tables. Or the flat surface can well be a tablecloth (usually green) or a large static grass mat. These are great solutions and I have used them many times (and will again). They are especially useful in RPGs or skirmish wargames, they make no mess, they can include a square or hex pattern, and you can roll them and store them away. Of course the rolls are big and take some space. But my main problems with printed surfaces are a) they are flat, and b) they are fixed.
2. adding terrain pieces on a flat board; I guess this is the most common solution - God knows, it is the one I have used so far. It usually is an expansion of the previous solution: get flat green/printed board and add roads, rivers, hills, buildings etc. Its fast, does the job, looks good, and has actual game value: you can create different terrain configurations, depending on the scenario played or even random terrain placement rules. But it does not "look" that realistic. I am not only a modeler by hobby, but an surveying engineer/cartographer by profession. They are not pleasing to my eye and do not reinforce my will to wage battle on them. I am especially sensitive towards the ground features -not the man-made ones, like buildings. I would like hills and roads to look a part of the surrounding terrain, not like afterthoughts. And especially, I cannot stomach rivers, creeks, craters and chasms that actually rise OVER the surrounding ground (ok, only for WWII gaming in the Netherlands) 
3. modular terrain boards; this is the most complicated and more expensive -but also most realistic- solution sort of a fully build terrain tabletop. And they come in all sort and sizes. Here is where Pedion come in. You see, I started searching for commercial solutions in terrain tiles, and while many, none fulfilled me completely. While there are many solutions for dungeon-building, the wargame terrains where quite expensive, big in size, did not allow much variation and came mostly unpainted - and they were expensive, did I say that? One of my favorites -which I almost ordered- is the HEXON II modular terrain; they are modular, lightweight, easily stored, allowing for an extreme variety of battlefields. However, even with them I would have to spend around €200 (that is ~$250) to fill a 6'x4' area of flat green flocked tiles, without any other features... ouch

After examining (and applying) the solutions above, I came to some basic requirements for my wargaming terrain (finally mate, took you long enough). These are:

• Modularity - again, I would love to have a large, uninterrupted gaming board lying around, but I cannot. So I need my terrain to consist from multiple pieces (tiles) that I can pull out of storage and fit together to create the second best thing: a good looking terrain, even if some seams are showing. However, being modular does not mean that it would not offer some advantages: modular tiles should be used to create multiple layouts of the terrain, conforming to different scenarios - something that a fixed (or printed) board cannot do, however beautiful. Many make "modular" boards which are actually larger boards simply cut into pieces. They can be stored away, but always fit the same way (or with slight variations). I want my tiles to support different layouts - check out the great design process from Clarence Harrison over Quindia. Taking this a step further, I would also like my tiles interchangeable, e.g. I could remove some "broken ground" tiles and add some "forest" tiles in their place (kind like HEXON allows).
• Efficient storage - storage space is an issue for me, and I guess for others. Terrain pieces tend to take space. Lot's of it. While this is something you cannot avoid with pieces like houses, trees etc (or can you? I'll let you know in a later post...) perhaps something can be done with the terrain board. Large pieces of board are simply to difficult to store. Rolled prints or mats can fit vertically behind doors or tall closets, but they can fold - and they are too 2D for me. So if I go with modular tiles, I would like them in a size that can be easily stored away. Large tiles take less time to fit into a board but take more space afterwards. Small tiles take more time to layout but be put into a box, on a self (this is something that Hexon does really good, I told you I liked them). What I would like would be tiles which they strike a "golden" medium between size and storage space. Something to fit on a regular 30-40cm (~1 foot) self and stack over another, allowing my to close the cabinet door and keep them out of sight. Stacking is also important: tiles cannot be too high/deep. Stacking 15 or 20 3-5 cm (2") thick tiles one over another can create  a largeee stack that will not fit easily everywhere. I would like my normal (flat, not hilly) tile to rise around 1 or 2 cm (0.4-0.8").
• Lightweight - since I am tending towards a modular system, I will need to move it around. And not only from and towards my table, but to carry it to friends' houses, my game store, conventions, even ship it. Thus I need my tiles to be made from lightweight materials. This is one of the main reasons I would try to avoid eg mdf basing - it's great, but adds a lot of weight, even if the wood is thin. 
• Economy- by this I mean affordable, not cheap. When people and companies charge these sums for their modular tiles, they are not out to make millionaires of themselves (I think). But molds are expensive, and this is the cost you have to pay for a quality product. However, I do believe that there exist materials and techniques that cost less (especially if you are doing it yourself). Perhaps there will be some loss on quality, but the result will not necessarily suffer so much as to be unusable in everyday wargaming. To be more specific, I do not think one can get a good-looking 3D terrain board for a 6x4 table with only $30, but I do not want to spend $250 for an unpainted board either. I would consider something in the price range of $80-120 a decent and honest trade for 4x4 or 4x6 terrain (even if I still lacked the funds to buy it). 
• Durability - as theTerrainTutor aptly calls it, the tiles must be "wargaming resistant". Normal usage and storage should not see them bend, flayed, shrank etc... Not that there will be no wear, especially as long as the production cost goes down....
• Appearance - yes, I would like my tiles to look good, and even come pre-painted and pre-flocked! I know, I could do it myself. However, if I am going to pay over 200 euros, at least the terrain can come ready-to-play. I do not necessarily mean professional looking, drooling over terrain (oh  - my  - GOD!). Realistic 3D terrain that creates the illusion of a real landscape will suffice to let my imagination roar (along with my Dwarves)
• Level Surface - perhaps this sounds at odds with my wish for a 3D terrain board. I mean, if I want flat, I could just roll a grass terrain mat already! What I actually mean is that the terrain should be made for wargames, not for a modeling/railway diorama. I want realistic looking ground, but on the same time I have to move my miniatures along and roll dice. So the tiles should try and strike a fine balance between the illusion of a 3D environment and large flat (or gently sloped) surfaces where the minis do not fall off or get stuck when moving. This annoys the surveyor in me, but I HATE it when the minis do not stand upright...
• Seamless - I understand you cannot escape the joints showing on a modular board. And the smaller the tile size, the larger the number of seams among them. However, I would like the tiles to fit closely, and perhaps a solution to cover the gaps from showing to much. Deep and/or wide seams can even affect gameplay, movement of trays, and dice rolling (dice may fall into the small gap, listing on one side). 
• Connectivity - I would like my tiles to keep together and not move/slide on the tabletop. So something must keep them together. This can be done either by tile shape (an advantage of hex based tiles) or heavier basing - but the latter contradicts to my lightweight requirement above. Plastic tiles sometimes have a connecting system like some sort of clips. The minimum requirement would be a way to stop the tiles from moving horizontally. Now, if it could also allow for raising a bit of the board without some tiles falling off, all the better....

Wow, did you read this far? thank you! I will not rumble anymore, since I will elaborate on how Pedion will tackle these requirements in future blogs. I would welcome your ideas, additions and comments on the points I make, but hold your horses a bit on proposing solutions - these I will discuss in more detail another time. 

As a final note, I give you some images of my first efforts creating a modular tile system that tries to fill the Requirements I mentioned. In some areas it succeeds, in others it fails. What you see is a 4'x4' (approx.) game terrain consisting of road, plain and difficult ground tiles. It is extremely lightweight, easily stored, adequate on appearance, and can be laid out in a myriad of ways. However it lacks on durability and stability. I have moved on from these materials, but tell me what you think. Oh, and the building are just for show - cardboard printouts of the fabulous Dragon Games series. 

Good gaming all!