There are 2 pillars of strength to every account: Upgrades and Skills
Skill Cards are the valuable resource needed to unlock new Skills that give permanent bonuses to a player's account.
All Skill Cards are divided into blue, red and purple rarity even though their official names are Common, Rare and Epic Skill Cards. Usually Epic tier Skills have the highest impact on a battle while Common Skills have the lowest effect, but this doesn't always have to be the case. For example usually in Gold league, the Common Skills for Deployment Duration, Deployment Speed and Construction Speed can decide if a player can place a Shipyard during deployment time or not, therefore making for a huge advantage against those who can't do it. Therefore it's best to not underestimate any of the Skills and rather to consider each of their uses.
Currently there are several known ways of acquiring Skill Cards:
Tournament Wins: 2 Skill Cards (guaranteed)
Advertisement Chests: ? Skill Cards (random)
Token Chests: ? Skill Cards (random)
Ingame Shop (for Gold): usually the exact amount needed for the next Skill Upgrade
Ingame Shop (for Money): usually the exact amount needed for the next Skill Upgrade
Ingame Shop (Packages): usually a fixed combination between Skill Cards of mixed variety (amount: fixed, cards: random)
Promo-Codes (from social media promotions): usually 40 blue Skill Cards even though promo-codes for 10 red Skill Cards have also appeared sometimes
Currently Skill Cards can only be used to buy new Skills and its not possible to trade them for other Resources like Gold or to other players. It is important to know that Skills are different from upgrades, as they don't have any kind of delay attached to them, meaning that they are available instantly after they are bought. Besides Skill Cards, they also always require Credits to be unlocked.
Usually upgrades for higher Skill Ranks require higher amounts of both resources where the following formulas roughly apply within a single Skill Rank series:
Number Blue Skill Cards = 2 x Number Red Skill Cards = 4 x Number Purple Skill Cards
4x Blue Skill Credit cost = 2x Red Skill Credit cost = 4x Purple Skill Credit cost
Note: The Skill Card Credit Cost can not be discounted by using the Upgrade Cost Skill