About
Built for game night.
Free forever.
Smash Up Randomizer is a fan-made web app that takes the hassle out of picking factions. No login, no ads, no nonsense — just shuffle and play.
The Project
The problem with picking factions by hand
Every Smash Up session starts the same way: someone grabs the faction tokens, tries to shuffle them "fairly," and inevitably someone ends up unhappy with the deal. Disputes, re-draws, house rules that nobody agreed on first.
Smash Up Randomizer was built to solve exactly that. Pick your player count, tell the app which expansions you own, and hit shuffle. The server assigns every player two factions — truly random, visually clear, no arguments.
It started as a small personal tool and grew into something worth sharing. It's still maintained by a single developer, updated whenever new expansions drop, and will stay free indefinitely.
Under the hood
Built in the open
- Laravel — PHP framework — backend logic, routing, data
- Alpine.js — Lightweight JS for interactive UI elements
- Tailwind CSS — Utility-first styles, dark theme throughout
- Vite — Frontend build pipeline & hot reload in dev
- Matomo — Self-hosted analytics — opt-in only, no third parties
Principles
What we care about
Privacy first
Analytics run on our own Matomo instance — opt-in only. Zero third-party trackers, zero ad networks. Your session data stays yours.
True randomness
Faction assignments are generated server-side using PHP's cryptographically seeded shuffle. No patterns, no favorites — every draw is genuinely fair.
Radical simplicity
Three steps: pick players, pick expansions, shuffle. No account, no tutorial, no dark patterns. You're done before the snacks are out.
Stop arguing.
Start playing.
The table is set, the snacks are ready. All you need is a fair deal on factions.
Shuffle Now