I had recently run into a problem at my LGS and I'd like to know how would you've acted in my situation.

This was an unusually large FNM, we had modern and standard and 3 draft pods going. I was not judging the event and was playing in one of the drafts, when two players from a different draft pod came to me. One of them asked me if I could help them with a Judge call, and I asked my opponent to give me a moment and went to the players. I asked the player if he wanted me to follow him to his game, but he said it was not necessary, as he wanted to ask something that would affect his play and he didn't want his opponent to listen to the question.

The player then asked me in approximately these words “when damage is declared, can I respond?” and then I stopped him and asked damage from what? when? he would need to be more specific… Then he said “during combat, after blocks, when damage is declared, can I respond?” and then, as I was still unsure about what was going on, I said that combat damage did not use the stack and, during the combat damage step, all damage was done at the beginning of this step and players could not respond to damage, which I understood was the answer for his question. I asked him if this answered his question, he said yes and went back to his game and I went back to mine.

Later in the event, another judge came to me and questioned me about having told a player that he could not respond to declaring the order of blockers, and I was surprised because that was not AT ALL what I've been asked.

How would you have acted in a situation like this?

Your description makes it sound fairly obvious that the player was
trying to figure out when he can last act before damage happens. Some
of that might be that as you now know that is what he wanted you are
making his questions clearer.


Feels like a better answer may have been an explanation of what
happens from blockers being declared till damage resolves:

“When blockers are declared, next the order creatures are blocking in
is declared, then there is normal round of priority for players to do
anything they wish before damage assigned & happens”

First off, you haven't done anything wrong, just in case you think you have. He asked a question you clarified and received confirmation of what he was asking, and then you answered accurately.As for what you could do differently, as Gareth suggested you could break down the second half of the combat phase, but I generally just ask the player what they're actually attempting to do with the cards. This would lead to them saying something like “oh I want to pump my guy after he blocks so my guy lives and his dies” and suddenly you know what you need to say :D