The perfect thumbnail generator?

I’m looking for a plugin that generates/displays a thumbnail from A) a random post or B) the x most recent post(s) – preferably in some selected categorie(s) – with a link to that post.
I need it to display a teaser image on my site’s front page.
Any suggestions please?
If it could even show one teaser image one place on the page and a row (table?) of 4-5 images in another place (all with the post’s title) it would be fantastic.
(I’m changing the front page here with a small image to the left of the big one but keeping the smaller at the bottom – which today are put in using html)
I’ve tried several solutions (Post-thumb revisited – seems outdated, random thumbs – can’t make it work,…) and searched around a lot – but still need some tips.
Thanks,
Kjetil