Awakened Awareness

Two effects that usually pull in opposite directions sit on the same Aura here: it makes something bigger and it makes something smaller, and the timing of when each applies is the whole trick. The +1/+1 counters land as an enters trigger, a discrete lump of stats that stay put once placed. The base-power-and-toughness clause, by contrast, is a continuous effect that keeps rewriting the creature's printed numbers to 1/1 for as long as the Aura sits on it. Because counters apply in a later layer than base-stat setting, they stack on top of the imposed 1/1 rather than being erased by it. That layer ordering is what turns a downgrade into an upgrade of your own choosing: enchant something small and it grows by X; enchant an opposing threat and, if X is low, you have shrunk it while handing it counters you would rather not. The Aura also reads artifacts as legal targets, so it can dump counters onto a Vehicle or an artifact creature and change what it is worth crewing or attacking with. The interesting friction is that the enchanted permanent keeps its 1/1 base only while the creature stays a creature; the counters persist regardless. It is a rate-neutral removal-or-pump toggle whose direction you set at cast, priced by the X you are willing to pour into it.