Well, I seriously doubt this is just GM inexperience, inasmuch as the bennie hoarding is a direct result of the incentive created by the system. To expand on a comment I made above, this also is demonstrated in the flow of combat. Unless you play with very low toughness PCs and monsters (in which case you'll go through bennies like candy), you're going to get the "hit - does nothing, hit - does nothing, hit - does nothing, hit - ace damage dice - 5 wounds - dead" pattern. This works against the player as much as it works for the player, so you can either save your bennies so that you don't get -3 to every subsequent roll due to wounds, or you can use them and be out the first time your GM aces a damage roll (BTW, we played Slipstream using SWADE and saw no difference in this pattern). I'm just curious as to what the "normal" flow of combat is supposed to be like, if this is somehow unusual. I need direct examples of what it should look like, not vague assertions that it shouldn't happen like that.
Except everything you're describing is exactly that. Hell, the very way you're describing play it's as if you're playing mechanics as the game. I could reduce D&D down to the same algorithm - you swing, miss? Hit! roll damage. Rinse/repeat. This game is boring. The fact that you experience this shows me your GM either has you fighting things beyond your ability - or he's like me and likes things bloody
but he never decided to tell his players (you) that.
The Benny economy properly managed (and honestly it's *NOT* that hard. Just hand out Bennys for the shit you like your players doing). If you never incentivize them for that of course they're going to hoard, especially in a brutal game where despite their abilities every fight gets them down to 3 Wounds. You're putting them in siege mode. Unless the setting is supposed to be like that, he's managing it wrong. That's crazy.
There is a miscommunication happening, clearly. I've been running this thing across multiple genres from lowly normy-humans fighting quasi-supernatural shit, to mountain shattering Rifts, fights rarely last more than a few rounds and it gets deadly when it's appropriately supposed to be deadly. Sure you can get your wild rolls where exploding dice insta-kill someone. OH WELL enjoy the easy kill PC's. And it's happened to PCs on occasion too.
But moderating all of that requires the GM to understand the system. Not sure what to tell you, your stories sound like others new to the system - including me, which dissolved the moment it clicked on Bennys. That took like two sessions to figure out. /shrug.