It's not exactly related but Designer as an array copy option also called " Power Duplicate" that repeats all the modifications you did on the last operation. So if you moved, rotated and resized an image, the next time you copied it would auto move/rotate the next amount. Publisher can also use ctrl+J to use power duplicate. This video here is very good at covering Designer, at 17:08 it covers power duplicate.
It's not really a fix but you might be able to use it to quickly make an array similar to n-up. Granted it won't be sized to best fit and doesn't work with pages, but if you are desperate it might slightly help. Beyond that, I don't think there is anything in Publisher that would work. I second n-up feature as I'd love to be able to use that for printing bookmarks and test print material.