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I've been eyeballing STAW for a while, I'm just as big of a Star Trek fan as I am Star Wars, and when I found out the system was the same as X-Wing it had me really wanting to try it out. I had some extra money in my Paypal account, so I added the starter onto my most recent order with DGI, and now that I have it, I'm not exactly sure where to go from here. With X-Wing the factions are very clear cut, but with the Faction system in Attack Wing being much looser, I'm just not sure where as a new player I should go. My favorite series was DS9 so I am excited that I could potentially have the Defiant, alongside Bajoran and Maquis ships, but I'm not sure if that's a recipe for disaster on the tabletop or if there is something to it.

Is there a list of "first buys" that gets you very much recommended cards? What are Organized play standards like in this game? It's not nearly as popular in my area as X-Wing is, though I have heard there is a group for it at the LGS but I don't know anyone in it.

Depends on what your local gaming group plays really, most seem to be entirely open mix with only the penalty cost to pay. Some are faction pure (so all ships and cards etc from one faction in your force) and some are ship pure (so only cards from that faction on each ship, any mix of ships).

Personally I'm a fan of faction pure. It seems to alleviate the most broken meta-builds and also looks a damned sight better.

OP is very dependent on your local area. It's (sadly) often very competitive, to the point of obnoxious. If you can get a USS Defiant, grab one, they're decidedly uncommon now. I'm a DS9 fan all the way so I'm pure Dominion. Building a fed/DS9 fleet is harder because of a dearth of ships, although Ent-E is rockin' (I like it with the starter crew) and the Fed fighters are nails. If you want a fluffy mix do mirror Ds9 with ISS Defiant and Regent's Flagship (ok, so not faction fluffy, but show fluffy...)