In 2008, as part of a larger military restructuring, the brigade-sized unit was disbanded and reformed as a battalion of the Motorized Guard Brigade.

When the war begun, the 1st Brigade was directed to eastern Slavonia, an area of Croatia which was under heaviest attack.

As the city was under heavy attack by a large number of tank and mechanized units of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), it was soon surrounded and besieged.

Once the Croatian Army went from defensive to offensive strategy in 1993, the army doctrine was based on a variation of blitzkrieg strategy in which weaker units would hold lines and Guard brigades - like the Tigers - would be used as line breakers to penetrate defenses, then isolate and destroy enemy formations.

In May 1995, during Operation Flash, 1st Guard brigade led one of two main attacks that fragmented and destroyed Serb forces in Western Slavonia.

For Operation Storm, the brigade was deployed along the west sector (north of Gospić) and was the main strike element responsible with reaching the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina on that line.

The brigade captured Plitvice (where the first casualties of the war fell in 1991's Plitvice Lakes incident) and reached the border, linking up with the elements of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) - one of the aims of the operation was the deblocking of the Bihać pocket where the ARBiH’s Fifth Corps was besieged.