Be prepared to go Back to Karkand next Tuesday, December 6th if you play on a PS3. Full details after the jump.

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand is a massive themed expansion pack featuring four legendary Battlefield maps reimagined in the Frostbite 2 engine. You also get three vehicles (the VSTOL fighter jet, Desert Buggy, and an APC), ten new weapons that you can bring back to the base game, a new layer of persistence with an all-new Assignments, plus five shiny Trophies.

The maps chosen for this expansion pack are all classic fan favorites: Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman, and Strike at Karkand (from where the expansion pack got its name). These maps are about all-out warfare in a variety of settings and have collectedly been played literally billions of times by Battlefield players. Now, they are due for a reimagining with the power of the Frostbite 2 engine. This allowed the developer do things like take the level of destruction to ridiculous heights. You can basically turn these entire maps into rubble (with the exception of Wake Island, which has a lot less buildings and is more of an open landscape).

The design idea for Back to Karkand is that these legendary maps have aged since you last saw them. If you are a returning veteran, you will feel instantly at home, but there will also be a sense of exciting rediscovery about them. If you have not played on the before, they are simply a great addition to the nine available multiplayer maps in Battlefield 3, building on all the strengths of the series.

Here is a closer look at Assignments, specifically the “Let it Rain” Assignment. To complete this assignment, players must score 20 kills with Light Machine Guns and two mortar kills. The game will keep track of how far along you have come fulfilling this assignment. When you have met the requirements, you will unlock a new Back to Karkand weapon (with a matching set of dog tags) to use on any map including the base game. You will also unlock the next Assignment in the series, the new Creeping Death Assignment.

As with all of the Assignments introduced in Back to Karkand, you can keep building towards these no matter if you play on regular maps or maps from the new expansion pack itself. Your regular persistence will also be intact and keep building up no matter what map you play. In this way Back to Karkand is completely integrated into the base game, including the ability to have a map rotation mixing base game maps with Back to Karkand maps.

Here are the five new Trophies you can hunt in Back to Karkand:

• Complete Warrior (Silver)
  Get a kill with the following weapons in a single life: Rifle, Jet, Tank
• Third Tour (Bronze)
  Get a kill with the new APC, Desert Buggy, and STOVL fighter jet
• Gunslinger (Bronze)Get 10 kills with all B2K weapons
• Like a Boss! (Silver)
  Get a kill with the skid loader
• Jaws (Bronze)
  Take a swim in the pool at the Oman hotel

If you are a Battlefield 3 Limited Edition owner, the pack is free, otherwise it is $14.99.