Here’s a new plugin for you all here to play with!
{lastposts} return the most recent posts on your blog!
It has one parameter, posts, which is an integer between 1 and 20 to return that number of posts.
Example:
{lastposts posts='20'}
{if $lastposts != ''}
<br /><b>Most Recent Posts</b><br />
{foreach from=$lastposts key=key item=title}
<nobr><a href="{$siteurl}/archives/p/{$key}/c/1/more/1" title='{$title}'>{$title|truncate:50:"..."}</a></nobr><br />
{/foreach}
{/if}