(Deutsche Version) You do not necessarily need a terrain for tabletop games. Usually a carpet or table is also suitable. Unfortunately, this does not look that good and also tactical depth is missing, given by obstacles, hills, rivers and others.
To improve the look, you can buy a cheap gaming mat which come in different looks like grass, desert and several more. Alternatively, you can use a felt mat. To improve the tactical depth, you can use terrain pieces which you just have to place on the mat (e.g. hills or a forest).
To achieve a higher level of good-looking, you could think of building your whole terrain out of one piece. For someone who has a lot of space this is suitable, otherwise you should ask yourself where to store a 1.2x1.8 m big plate which even has a sensitive and rough surface.
The optimal solution is now a modular gaming table. There exist several companies which sell them like Ziterdes, Citadel or Kallistra.
The terrain pieces of Ziterdes and Citadel are quite alike, both consist of 60x60 cm plates which can feature hill corners. Citadel is much more expensive than Ziterdes, both have little diversity (there are hill corners, for the plates of Ziterdes there are also rivers but that's all), in addition, the plates are quite big so there are only few alternatives of how to combine the plates.
Personally, I like Kallistra, the terrain consists of hexagons which can be combines like in The Settlers of Catan. There is a wide range of hexagons like rivers, hills, bridges and even modular castles. Unfortunately, Kallistra is designed for the 15 mm scale, this means that 28 mm figures would stand on very small towers and walls. This is the only reason why I didn't buy the terrain from Kallistra, whoever does not need a fortress can use the Kallistra terrain.
With all the possible systems not being suitable for me I decided to build my own terrain. The basic principle is similar to Citadel/Ziterdes: I use plates which can be combined modularly. I decided to use a edge length of 20 cm to have more possible combinations. My terrain is designed to have several different aspects like the Kallistra terrain: Hill corners and edges, lakes, high plateaus, fortresses and maybe even sea. In the next posts, I will explain how I built the terrain respectively how you can build the terrain (and spend not that much money). To have a comparison, I want to show some basic prices of the terrain.
Ziterdes: A 60x60 cm plate (painted and some grass on it) costs 28 €, if you buy a set of 6, 22 €. Calculated for a 20x20 cm plate this is about 2.4 €.
Citadel: The 6 plate set (unpainted, no grass) costst 230 €, this is about 38 € per plate respectively 4.3 € per 20x20 cm plate.
Kallistra: A set consisting of 21 plates covers 90x120 cm and costs 50 pounds, with grass 75, this is about 60/90 €. This results in a price of 2.2/3.3 € per 20x20 cm plate.
To have a comparison: For one 20x20 cm plate, I spent about 85 ct, adding grass will result in about 1 €.
To summarize everything: The price to cover an area of 180x120 cm you have to spend:
Ziterdes: 130 €
Citadel: 230 €
Kallistra: 120/180 €
home-made (my terrain): about 54 €
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