You could do TFT with "theater of the mind", but given its origins and strengths just as a tactical wargame, you'd be missing a lot of the fun.
A generic hex map would do. The Wizard/Melee ones look great, but sometimes for random gaming you just want an infinite flat featureless plain to draw on. The megahex tiles from the TFT box are also useful to assemble rooms and corridors of the appropriate size and shape on demand. (I used to have some that I'd photocopied, pasted, and cut out of posterboard, which did the job, but the ones in the TFT box look much nicer -- plus, dry erasable and double-sided for plain or with printed terrain. I'm a little surprised the Box O' Megahexes didn't wind up as its own line item to be ordered separately.)
Along with tokens and minis to mark character locations and facing, there's the standup 2D paper figure -- the SJG line is called "
Cardboard Heroes", and other people followed suit with their own lines and artwork. So there's a range of appearance and cost to suit any taste and budget. (I still have my originals from back in the day, when the 7-hex dragon was the ultimate terror... now eclipsed by that 14-hex monster in the Legacy Edition box. Ironically, CH are now PDF downloads that I'd print on my own cardstock, the exact opposite of the old version where I bought the figures, but had to manufacture my own megahexes...) Owners of 3D printers can also download models to make their own plastic 3D minis.