I'm finding that running 4e games takes a different kind of prepwork than running 3rd edition games. Specifically, the terrain and map for the encounter are, in my opinion, a lot more important than before. I tried using a battlemap from Keep on the Shadowfell and it worked out very nicely.
I saw at my FLGS that there were tiles for sale but they were pretty small. Ideally I'd like to find some full-size battlemaps that I can quickly lay out between encounters.
What have other people found to be useful for handling the terrain for 4e encounters?
If you want whole maps pre-drawn I suggest getting one of those presentation pads with 1" squares on them. They usually go for about $30 for a lot of sheets. You can sharpie the map on there and just lay it out when you're ready to go. They're not particularly pretty but your imagination should make up for it.
For something more visually appealing tiles are a good way to go but can require a bit of effort. WoTC's tiles are good but get pricey for putting large dungeons together.
If you have a lot of printer ink and some extra time to kill than Skeleton Key Games and Fat Dragon have really good tiles and terrain you can print out and put together yourself. These all look great and can be fun to construct as well if you're a "crafty person."
I also believe there are a lot of DDM skirmish battlemaps floating around that you can buy. They're pretty much only good for one encounter, possibly two if your PCs have a lot of imagination.
Good luck and happy 4E'ing. :)
I play the D&D Miniatures skirmish game, so I have a fair number of the skirmish battlemaps laying around, but whenever they're even vaguely appropriate, I try to work them into my RPG game as well.
There's just something nice about having the pre-drawn battlemaps to make things nice and clear. When I draw stuff out, or even when I use the dungeon tiles, sometimes there's confusion about elevation changes, what's a wall, what part of a dungeon feature is dangerous, etc. The maps pretty much eliminate that.
I have a massive collection of Dungeon Tiles to draw from but they do require a bit of advance planning. I have mine divided up by features and size so I can build some really cool maps 'on the fly'.
I was also a fan of those old "Fantastic Locations" mini modules WotC put out. The adventure was usually crap but you did get 2 double sided poster sized full colour maps with lots of cool terrain features. I've used pretty much every one of them now from city streets to a cavern of mushrooms. I was deeply disappointed when the line was canceled although they were a little expensive in retrospect ($13 iirc). There were 6 all totaled.