If I were to play AW I'd want to do the Borg because as a faction they've always fascinated me but given how broken they are I could never do it.
Also I've played heroclix and mw darkages and both are typical wizkidz games with poor balance and poor miniature quality.
Im not a massive trek fan but i had a look at AW in my local store.
Two major problems leapt out at me.
one the 'pre paint' was appalling, the 'clean' look of star trek meant the minis just looked like board game pieces from say a MB game with no 'realism'.
two, there were some *tiny* ships at the same price as ships four times the size of them. You really dont get your moneys worth with some factions.
Wings of glory has me tempted though as a diversion from xwing
I play both X-wing and Attack Wing. I enjoy both games. If I had to only pick one I would probably pick X-Wing. Here are my thoughts.
I like the way captains/ships work in Attack Wing better than in X-wing. The captain and the ship are different cards.
I like the way ordnance works in Attack Wing. You disable most ordnance instead of discarding it.
Organized Play in Attack Wing is WAY better. If it wasn't for the great organized play I probably wouldn't play this game much if at all. This is a huge thing for me. It helps build gaming communities.
Attack Wing has consistent releases nearly every month, and they are almost always on time. When they are late they aren't more than a couple of weeks late.
I wouldn't say that Attack Wing has balance issues so much as balance is approached totally differently. There are cards (and combos of cards) that are just better than others. Nobody get's in arguments over Voyager being better than the Reliant on the Attack Wing forums. Voyager is just an amazing ship, and everyone agrees. There are also soooo many special rules on ships and captains and crew and everything that the game becomes about mixing and matching them. If your not munchkining the game your not really playing as it was intended to be played. For many of my friends this is why they like Attack Wing better. They like building insane lists. The current trend is a 100 point Voyager. Oh and by the way that 100 point Voyager is nearly impossible to beat. I wouldn't say that this is a good thing or a bad thing about Attack Wing, but it is a huge style of play issue.
X-Wing is in many ways the opposite. Variance in number of dice and power AND number of special rules is much smaller. Victory in X-wing has a lot more to do with how you fly your list rather than what list you brought. For me this is one of X-wing's greatest qualities. But it isn't something that is inherently good or bad about X-wing, but it is a big issue for how it is played.
Attack Wing plays more like Magic the Gathering, and X-wing is more like Chess.
But the OP asked about money. So I will try to address this issue as well. It is more complicated than it may seem at first.
If all you want to do, is build a list ahead of time, then buy just those ships and play your list, Attack Wing would probably be cheaper simply because fleet sizes tend to be smaller. However it still depends on your list. With so many upgrade cards in Attack Wing, you may need to buy a ship just for one great card. That Voyager only list I mentioned requires you to buy somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 ships (that is a guess).
But that isn't really the way most people play these games. We pay some money to get in, then usually keep up with new releases as we continue in the hobby. I think I would say that I have spent more money on X-wing. I buy multiples almost every ship that comes out. I usually would like to have enough of any give ship that I could fill a 100 points with just their lowest skilled pilots. 8 TIEs, 4 X-wings etc. This is partially because of how much I love this game. I sort of want to be able to fly any possible combo in the game.
As for Attack Wing, I originally started only collecting Klingon and Federation, then I added Dominion (mostly just Jem'Hadar) and finally (the meta dominating) Borg. I guess that means that the only faction with very many ships that I haven't collected is the Romulans. But I have far from every ship in the factions I collect. With three or four ships released every month there are just too many for me to be able to collect. Of course there are so many ships in each faction that it is rare that I buy more than one of each expansion.
If you want to a copy of every ship in Attack Wing that gets really expensive really fast. Even if you only buy one of each ship. And if you want to be really competitive you probably should try to buy one of each ship. Remember this game is all about combos. There are tons of ships that are relatively lame, but people buy them for the upgrades they come with. Most upgrades are unique and only come with one ship. This is also a game where you can cross factions. It only increases the price of an upgrade by 1 point to do so. So even if you want to be faction pure, you take a handicap to do so.
I will admit that most Attack Wing Players do try to be faction pure or at least don't buy all the ships.
Just say no. At first you'll think it's really fun and cool. It'll make you feel good. But then you'll realize that at it's core it's just a terribad knock-off of X-Wing and you'll be sad and then angry at yourself for spending money on it that you could have spent on X-Wing.
Im not a massive trek fan but i had a look at AW in my local store.
Two major problems leapt out at me.
one the 'pre paint' was appalling, the 'clean' look of star trek meant the minis just looked like board game pieces from say a MB game with no 'realism'.
two, there were some *tiny* ships at the same price as ships four times the size of them. You really dont get your moneys worth with some factions.
Wings of glory has me tempted though as a diversion from xwing
If you want more expensive ships you can buy Borg. They have a $30 ships and soon a $90 ship.
Im not a massive trek fan but i had a look at AW in my local store.
Two major problems leapt out at me.
one the 'pre paint' was appalling, the 'clean' look of star trek meant the minis just looked like board game pieces from say a MB game with no 'realism'.
two, there were some *tiny* ships at the same price as ships four times the size of them. You really dont get your moneys worth with some factions.
Wings of glory has me tempted though as a diversion from xwing
If you want more expensive ships you can buy Borg. They have a $30 ships and soon a $90 ship.
From every account i've read borg are horribly broken.
Im not a massive trek fan but i had a look at AW in my local store.
Two major problems leapt out at me.
one the 'pre paint' was appalling, the 'clean' look of star trek meant the minis just looked like board game pieces from say a MB game with no 'realism'.
two, there were some *tiny* ships at the same price as ships four times the size of them. You really dont get your moneys worth with some factions.
Wings of glory has me tempted though as a diversion from xwing
If you want more expensive ships you can buy Borg. They have a $30 ships and soon a $90 ship.
From every account i've read borg are horribly broken.
Apparently if you play faction pure, they aren't too bad. Still OP and not difficult to utilize their power, but it's not as glaring.
The problem apparently comes from the fact that tournies are not faction specific, so you can toss different OP commanders and crew from various factions into the OP borg ship and it gets pretty crazy.
I see.
I see.
LOL.
kmanweiss just natural 1'd his persuade check...
Rght now the STAW meta is horrible...this is due to the point system being too simple and well...broken. Wizkids has done nothing to deal with this. it really look like the game design is on auto pilot, there has been no word from the design /rules team in months. not one comment or response. compare this to the great interviews from the X-wing team at Gencon.
Point values do not take into account movement dials or Arcs. Borg have 360 arc and cost the same as an equivalent ship with a 90 degree arc.
To show how bad this is just look at the last 5 regionals. top 4 for the last 5 regionals have been about 16-18 Borg builds out of 20.
Stick with X-wing...the new third faction is really going to liven up the game.
I see.
LOL.
kmanweiss just natural 1'd his persuade check...
Well i don't play AW i'm willing to take his assesment at face value on this subject 
I can't believe the no trolls sign actually worked...
On-topic, this thread started out tickling my interest in both, but things have really taken a nose dive since we hit page 2...
Hearing how crap the D'Deridex was made me die a little inside.