I bought my Mirco White Water playfield in April 2018 and began to populate it in July. I wasn't aware of the playfield chipping and pooling issues back then, and I'm pretty sure I tightened my posts down probably more than I should have. It's now a year later and the playfield still looks good, no pooling or chipping.
I received my Creature playfield in June 2019 and I'll be populating it in a couple of weeks. I haven't mounted much yet except the support rails. I like them to be sturdy, and I swear I barely tightened the screw and it sank into the playfield, creating a small crater around the screw. I'm really nervous about this now and I think I'll go with the mylar under the posts treatment as a preventive measure. I'd have to take the apron off of White Water to see if the rail screws behaved the same and I just didn't notice at the time.
Mirco says their ceramic clearcoat is "same as we use on JJP/Dutchpinball/Heighway games". I also saw this in another thread:
"The ceramic clearcoat is filled with hard invisible ceramic particles which make the playfield more scratch resistant than the normal clearcoat. In addition to that the surface is more brilliant and smoother than on the normal version. The ceramic looks more like a mirror than the regular one and is more scratch resistant than the normal version. Dimpling will apply on both playfields as that is caused by the wood and not by the clearcoat. All machines I shop and have in my collection have the ceramic version as the ball rolls smoother on these...It is as clear as the regular coat, you will not notice the nano particles."
I did decide to go with a NIB - I ordered an Alice Cooper from Spooky, they seem to have things figured out. Right now I'm steering clear of JJP and Stern, though I've had no issues with Munsters.