I'm looking into making a simple 2D strategy game. It'd be tile-based. I've determined that each tile will take up apx 24 pixels and fit all together to make a grid.

My dilema is finding the best way of accomplishing this. I'm comparably new to VB, However I know how to create classes, Modules, and other such things. My original plan was to have each Terrain block be a modified PictureBox. However, somehow drawing 256 picture boxes on screen just doesn't feel like the right way of doing things, and seems to leave a lot of room open for errors.

Does anyone have any better ideas of accomplishing a tile-based terrain system that could provide for customizeable terrain types with various variables attached to them that could ideally be generated at runtime?

A friend of mine suggested drawing a large, grass image to be the base terrain, and several Terrain blocks would be drawn on top of this larger image. This would cut back on the amount of pictures being drawn, and would seem to be a bit simpler to work with.

My head is in a tailspin right now as this is the first graphically intensive application I've done, and am not really sure to begin here. Any expertise on the matter is greatly appreciated.