Hi

I'm turning my forum into a blog forum. On the front I intend to display 2-4 topics using the front page news script so that more content is shown but underneath I would like only a few latest replies to display, this is so new replies can be seen. On page 2 of latest posts I would like a great number of posts to displayed. is this possible?

Thanks

It is possible, but you need a custom script for that. This couldn't be achieved with some of the existing miniBB functions or add-ons.
(This is about if you mean truly the list of all latest replies, listed in the posting order. If you mean one reply per topic, but skipping all other topic's info, there is possible to play with $textLd option)
As about the number of topics in the News add-on, this is configured in add-on's options.