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The downside is, gameyness increases what I call the 'metagame', which is the game of lies and exploitations of rules loopholes that happens between the players, independent of the wargame they're playing.
Personally, I prefer wargames that come as close to a simulation mechanism as possible, where all moves in the game occur on the tabletop, and everything is plainly visible.
In this manner, Chess can be termed a simulation style game that lacks metagame elements.
Thus the winner of the game in the end is the player who picked the best army list (Strategy), pulled off the best manuevers in-game (Tactics), and maybe had a little help from female dice (Lady Luck).
The winner should not the guy who knows the most unrealistic rules exploits ("My planes will fly into the centre of your formation and stop in front of your Supreme Commander!"), but the guy who has the most raw skill, and doesn't need to rely on gamey exploits.
Epic, I believe, was always intended to be closer to a simulation style wargame than a cartoon-esque wargame, like Warhammer 40k. (Note that even W40k has moved away from gameyness in recent years)
Furthermore, the army lists were intended to be balanced against each other for 'blind' play without the help of gamey concealments; Gameyness only distorts the apparent affectiveness of army lists and makes the job of army list balancing all the harder (IE: Marines might appear awesome if they can swap their Rhinos for Pods before each game, but only in a Tournament environment... in a regular gaming environment (99.9% of games), they'd continue to be sub-standard).
This is not Warhammer 40k (Which contains Strategy and Luck, but few Tactics), this is EPIC.
1) Is it possible to recreate battlefield perceptions within the wargame context?
Yes, but they should be represented on the tabletop, independent of the Metagame.
2) When does one player's actions become 'beardy' or cheating in the eyes of another?
When the rules are unrealisticly exploited to gain advantage against the original spirit in which the rules were written.
This is entirely subjective, but an example might be:
- Using the now-defunct experimental hit allocation rules to apply three MW hits to one base of Terminators, and two normal hits to another base of Terminators. The odds are then, independent of on-board movement or shooting, quickly skewed in favour of one base surviving, instead of both dying.
3) Should this be encouraged (within reason) or discouraged, and how??
If a game system includes gameyness as a core concept, then it should be encouraged. Epic, I believe, is antithetical to gameyness.
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It always made perfect sense to me that you would land directly on top of something with a Landa if possible... 
