That card back probably is for Schizoid. My guess on the Morph card you see is probably going to part of a set of new cards that are either to be mixed into the deck for team games or for large games in general

Yea the extra cards will be for 8 player games, but I see no reason not to just throw them into the deck regardless. but especially in 6+ player games.

If that red alien is the Schizoid, then I am really wondering what that hideous 2-headed multi-mouthed beast is on the bottom right of the box (not the green guy).

My initial guess was that the new card back was for determining teams.  However, I looked on the CE product page (linked from the CA announcement), and it has the following as part of the description of the set:

Cosmic Alliance includes:

• 20 Alien Sheets
• 54 Cards, including
• 1 Player Colony Marker
• 5 Player Planets
• 20 Plastic Ships
• 38 Horde Tokens

The dangling "including" is there on the page.  However, we know that of those 54 cards, 20 are flares and 4 (I think... please correct me) would be the White Destiny cards.  That leaves 30; if I'm right and there is a special deck to determine teams, that's at least 16 of the 30 (could be more if they allow for further expansions and assume that each expansion comes with a new color).  The rest could be extra cards for the Encounter deck, hence the Morph.

But also... the Horde (nowhere to be found in the Amazing Power Thingy)?  I take it we finally do have enough Cosmic Tokens? 

A deck for teams seems redundant.  Just take two each of four destiny color cards and deal them out randomly.  But this is Fantasy Flight, so who knows.  There would still be no reason for 16 of them.  With the current number of players through expansion 3, you would only need one card for each of the eight players to say what team each is on.  If anyone (other than The Warp, of course!) is crazy enough to start a ten player game, we might see ten cards, but the game is said to be getting six expansions total, so I don't think we'll ever see more than 10 players.

I suppose they could do three-player teams with a ninth color, but three-sided games of Cosmic are boring, and I don't know that teams would make up for that much since you'd always have your team mates to invite automatically (depending on how team rules interact with this), then your opponent's team would be unable to side with you (I think), leaving little in the way of alliance decisions to make.  But even if they did account for this, a deck of 9-10 cards could easily have a diagonal line across it with something like 2A / 3B to indicate what team you're on if in a 2p team game or 3p.

Anything's possible, but the way I see it, there's no need for a deck of more than 8-10 cards, if there's need for a deck at all.  Bring on the new encounter cards!

Nice find on the Horde, too.  Didn't think to check the product page.  Wonder what alien could possibly need so many dang tokens.

I'm almost certain the cards with the new backs are for Schizoid's alternate victory condition. On Facebook, Peter Olotka hinted this was true by saying that there would be a "classic" Schizoid option as well. This implies that Schizoid now has a new way of determining victory conditions, and what more FFG-ish way than a little deck of cards. I'm greatly in favor of this, too, having championed this change on BGG for some time. Still, I'm glad that the classic Schizoid will be available for those who want it.

Adam is right that Destiny cards will probably get used to determine teams. There's no reason not to reuse existing components for that.

As far as the Horde tokens go, there's an old homebrew called Wabbit. It has the power to multiply, as in it spawns more ships every turn. I suspect that the Horde tokens are for an alien along those lines.

If anyone can figure out why I took the maximum number of players and multiplied them by two to come up with a 16 card team deck, please tell me.  I assume some combination of rum and/or Nyquil was involved, but whether it was consuming them or failing to consume them that was to blame I do not know.

(And yes, I am well over 21.   Also, thanks, Adam.)

Haha.  You were probably thinking that the game uses teams of 2 and most games use color to represent one team, so 8 colors, 8 teams, 16 players... and one giant Cosmic game!

Or who knows, they could have done some kind of thing where you get a sort of team power in addition to your alien power and represented it with cards.  I doubt Team Cosmic will last long before someone comes up with a variant like this.