Terrain Tiles

So having discussed a super secret project with my friend DW, we have discussed the potential to make a large quantity of terrain tiles (once its announced I will be letting you all know exactly what is going on!). With a back and forth about what he wants etc I have come up with following pros and cons etc.

Table Setup: 6' x 4' with modular terrain (standard table size)

2 feet square vs 1 feet square:

• 1' is obviously more flexible in terms of arranging your terrain in different layouts. 
• 2' gives you more flexibility as to where your terrain leaves the table. You always want it to be the same place on each tile so they match up and gives you the flexibility of deployment. In a 1' tile you should probably put the leave points in the middle especially if cutting down as the strength of the tile will be compromised. Whilst on a 2' tile you could put it at 6", 8" or 12" (the middle) away from the edge). Having said that you would still need to leave at midpoints to achieve maximum flexibility.
• Cost; 1 2' tile is a lot cheaper than 4 1' tiles.
• Edges; when building if you have a full woodshop you can make edge guards out of wood - obviously this is cheaper when making 2' tiles as less edges. I don't have the capacity to do this so I just put the polystyrene up to the edge and papier mache. The only problem is that this creates some shrinkage away from the bases and therefore slight gaps when putting tiles together. This is an increased problem when you have more, smaller tiles.
• Storage; may be easier to store 1' tiles, there again 2' tiles have less edges so less chance of damage. This really depends on what your storage is like.
• Weight;  obviously the 2' tile is heavier (and bulkier) so more difficult to move around the space. However this means they should be less susceptible to movement on table.

Looking at all this I'd advise 2 feet squares. I would also only put terrain to cross board edges when there is a physical depression (trench tiles, rivers, gorges etc).

The only other feature that would cross board edges would be large hills - either with set crossing points or as a terrace (cliff) - I think this could lead to some really fun designs with waterfalls.

Significant hills should probably be terraced (With smoother edges) - this makes it a lot easier to join edges across boards as well as reducing issues with figures falling over and for rules which use heights is a lot more quantifiable.

Other terrain we can build to sit on top of this could be other linear features such as roads, fences etc or area templates (woods).

With regards to depth of the tile it would be the depth of the wood base and then about 1" of polystyrene.