The way I see it, the reason why an archetype does things is important. In the Beta, the player mainly consumed units, because there was a unit (Nekkers) that boosted itself, while the consuming itself wasn't really important. Of course there were units like the Arachas Behemoth and the Harpy Eggs, but both of them hardly did see play.
Now in HC the player has real reasons to consume units. First of all, there is deathwish, which also existed in Beta but not that fleshed out and with a lot less tools. By consuming a deathwish unit the unit that is consumed becomes important and not the consuming itself. And the other reason good reason to consume units now is to have the highest unit on the battlefield which also has synergies.
And there is nevertheless Arachas Queen which adds value to consuming by adding more bodies to the board and thus is at least a bit more interesting than a simple boost by 1 when X mechanic.
Concerning Armor, that was always my most hated archetype from a conceptional viewpoint. The goal of armor in general, was to protect units. But the armor archetype did exactly the opposite. Instead of protecting units by giving it armor, the whole archetype was centered on removing armor from your own units. The only way to effectively give units armor, was a neutral card, and the only unit that profited from having armor was the Knight Elect.
And I wouldn't call cursed an archetype at all, because the only thing they really had in common was the cursed tag and hardly anything more.
The biggest problem that I had always seen in NR, was that the faction had tons of buffing (Foltest, Knight Elect, Reaver Hunters, Temerian Drummer/Field Medic, Blue Stripe Scouts, Priscilla, Dandelion, Odrin), but didn't had a single unit that profitted directly from being buffed, which was really a shame.
