Cheap FPGA boards for educational purposes: https://store.digilentinc.com/fpga-for-beginners/
The software is free: https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suit...
The hard part is several semesters worth of textbooks to go through that cover digital logic (try Mano's "Digital Design: With an Introduction to the Verilog HDL" to start with) through computer architecture in order to know what to do with the board.
Community support is indeed just beginning but the risc-V community and the HiFive1 - SiFive community support these polarfire FPGA's. Even 50 Risc-V softcores fit on this FPGA.
Just a happy user, not affiliated with Microchip/Microsemi
If you want something even cheaper look for some ICE40 boards, like up5k MDP, or tinyfpga.
A few interesting things to try out: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/ECAD+Arch/background/... https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/ECAD+Arch/files/Thack...
An intro to verilog: http://zipcpu.com/tutorial/