In the team covenant demo, every time someone got damaged from a special ability, it ignored shields. But then there are other cards like the lightsaber that explicitly say to ignore shields. It seems to me that there was an error, in that ANY kind of damage should go against shields first, unless the ability or card causing the damage actually says "unblockable" or "ignore shields" or something along those lines. I looked through the rules pic from a different thread, but it didn't look like it clarified this clearly.

Thoughts?

At the beginning of the video they say something about how these videos where always interesting to look at after learning and playing the game for a little while because of all the rules mistakes made. I expect this was just one of those mistakes.

I can say none of my demos used this bypass shields rule.

Shields block all types of damage unless something says otherwise.

I think FFG madea mistake in who they allowed to proctor that demo. They should have had someone with a better grasp of the rules. Honestly they should have done a better job getting all of the demo'ers prepared.

Not sure about what effect was used in the Team Covenant video. There is a card in the Kylo demo deck (I think Power of the Dark Side ?) that dealt unblockable damage. Unblockable damage also bypasses shields. One of the preview images has another card with unblockable, Force Choke .

Lightsaber has a special ability to deal 2 unblockable.