General

I play Magic and X-wing miniatures. Magic is definitely a game I recommend to anyone looking to get into card games. You can start with a $15 investment into an intro pack. Your local game shop will generally have at least one person willing to help a new player if you show up on a night they have an event.
X-wing is a dogfighting game using Star Wars ships. The core set is $40 and gives you some ships in both imperial and rebel factions. Heads up you see all the ships in the core set in the window on the box. Red print gets you classic pilots, Blue gets you force awakened ones. You can play competitively for under $100 for rebel and imperial factions, the scum and villainy faction is a little more expensive because you still need the movement templates and range ruler from the core set but get no useful ships. Scum can still be viable for probably $130-150

Netrunner looks neat but it seems like a game you need a partner to even learn. I love that it is asymmetrical, but since both sides play differently its harder to learn solo. Would love to sit down and learn it some day, just need another player first.

Oh if it seems like I have opinions on a lot of games mentioned its because I've curated the game collection and run tabletop gaming at the local anime convention for a few years so I've looked into a lot of games.

If tabletop miniatures are your bag, but you don't want to spend all that time painting up an army of hundreds of figures, I would recommend FROSTGRAVE from Osprey Publishing. It's inexpensive, easy to learn, and each player's 'army' consists of a dozen figures, at most!