Getting tired of clicking around with my mouse in VMWare Fusion on OSX, I did some googling, and found vmrun.  It's conveniently tucked away under /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/, which isn't on my $PATH, so I added a line to my .bash_profile.

alias vmrun='/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmrun'

Now, once I've spun up an appliance image, I can easily start it from the command-line (and through a script, ultimately):

leonard:front-end-appliance bob$ vmrun start front-end-appliance.vmx 
leonard:front-end-appliance bob$ vmrun list
Total running VMs: 2
/Users/bob/oddthesis/thincrust/jboss-cloud/build/appliances/front-end-appliance/front-end-appliance.vmx
/Users/bob/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Thincrust.vmwarevm/Thincrust.vmx

Here you can see my Thincrust image, which I use to build the appliance images.  And you see how I started a freshly spun appliance full of "front-end" goodness.