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Even though 6th ed made Sanguinary Guard more viable, I think most would still agree they lag far behind assault termies in terms of their viability. It's easy to say that you need to use cover more, or play more maneuverability -- but even taking this into account they're just not as good.

Reading through the DA codex, and really enjoying the idea of 'smite mode' for Deathwing Knights. Essentially it's an activate-able, fluffy buff for one single use. This made me think that a change to Death Masks would support the BA fluff, and essentially give SG a big one-turn buff without breaking them.

Current rules:
A unit charged by a model wearing a death mask must take a leadership test, or be reduced to WS 1 for the remainder of the assault phase.

Problems:
It's an expensive option designed to allow the SG to handle hordes in CC. However, if you're charging a bunch of boyz hoping the masks will whittle them down, then you're going to eat a lot of attacks in the next round. Sanguinary Guard don't have enough attacks anyway, so it's really a moot point. Against high leadership units it's largely ineffective.

Proposed change:
"The Sanguinary guard may activate their death masks during one assault phase in a battle. An energy field disorients the target, leaving them open to attack. A model wearing a death mask gets +1 A for the phase, and the target unit is reduced to initiative 1."

Difference: It allows the opponent to swing back at normal WS, but mitigates the change to furious charge, and lets the SG deal with high initiative armies. It's a one-off use, which allows a 5 man SG squad to strike with 20 attacks on the charge, at essentially I10 -- but for only one round. After that the masks are useless.

Keep the cost the same, make it an expensive buff. I think a one-off improvement is better than the potential of several mediocre ones.