You made some mistake on installation. The 32T chainring is still the "middle" ring w/ respect to chain line. There is no such thing as "cross-chaining" the middle ring, as another poster said. You should not have moved the FD at all. The FD doesn't 'know' that you have replaced the big ring w/ a bash. You want it to shift and to maintain the cage clearances that it had before. One thing you can do is screw the H limit screw really far in to keep from shifting out toward the bash, but that is not strictly necessary. Reducing the length of your chain to the minimum (wrap directly around the bigger ring in the front to the biggest cog in the back and add 2 links) is a good idea. Swapping down from a long cage RD to a medium cage (after you've decided 2x10 is for you) is a good idea. After this chain shortening, you may want to do a basic rear derailer tune (setting the L and H limits, making sure your cable pull is correct, adjusting the B-screw). Not to imply that simply taking your chain tool out of the box somehow moved these adjusters, but it sounds like someone did.
But the bash guard itself is no way I can think of responsible for your rear shifting issues. If you had done nothing but remove the crankset, replace the big ring w/ a bash, bolt everything back together, the shifting would not have changed at all. And you absolutely should be able to shift through all 10 cogs from the middle ring w/ no problems once the rear is tuned properly.
Speaking from experience w/ the e-thirteen DRS (a bash-middle-granny chain guide) set up on several different bikes. Not to mention both my current bikes are 1x9 running various guides each w/ generic triple crank parts.
