Bradd

I fully agree with your interpretation for the battleplans where the opposing territories meet. In that case, 18.1 clearly applies, and they're "within," not "wholly within." For the case where there's neutral space between territories, I did some further analysis. The game only refers to "territory" in three places: 18.1 Objective Markers, 28.2.8 Map, and the individual battleplans. The Deployment rule for each battleplan starts like this: "The attacker picks which territory is their territory. The other territory is the defender's territory." This implies that the gray neutral ground is not "territory" and therefore the clarification under 18.1 does not clearly apply. Therefore, I think your neutral ground interpretation is reasonable, and if we played a game together, I would agree to your interpretation. However, if you start from an assumption that points on the edge of an area are only "within" the area and not "wholly" within, there's still a consistent reading of 18.1: It simply clarifies that the point is within both areas. In other words, the emphasis in that rule is on both, not on within. Therefore, if an opponent preferred this interpretation, I would also agree (and I did, in a recent game). Coming at this from a completely different angle, you could argue that those points are neither aggressive nor expansion, so by the spirit of the name, they should not count unless they actually border enemy territory. I think this leans toward your interpretation being the intention of the rules.