As mafia, it depends. The first few day lynches are mostly pure speculation if you don't do anything outright scummy. People wont be able to pin-point exactly what is what in terms of voting patterns.

Since you're not hunting yourselves down, you're looking for power players. There's less of a pool to pull from compared to the townies. Power players being a) they have a power or b) they are showing to be very observant and are becoming a problem. Mafia will want to take them out first. Taking them off right off the bat is the best idea. That way there's no ties to you via day talk and them. Which is probably why qwerty got the ax right away.

The more the type B power player points fingers and connects the dots, the more incriminating your night kill will be. So if they're getting close, too close for comfort, and you kill them, that just reaffirms their finger pointing. But you can't leave them alive because they are swaying the town with their skills. So it's best to knock them out early as you can when realizing how they post.

And of course, you don't want the actual powers floating around. A doctor will protect a potential kill, wasting your night. A investigator will possibly out you as a mafiaso. So they're prime targets too.

If you can knock out your Type A and Type B power players early on, it's smooth sailing.

If you lay low, but not too low, you can successfully mafiaso the whole thing. Provide enough content to not seem like a baddie and you're participating but not too much to seem like you're intentionally swaying the public toward town lynches. Just a "oops, I could have sworn!"

The best tactic as town is to A) get people talking so they'll trip up while b) Laying low so you don't reveal yourself as a power player.


AT LEAST IN MY EXPERIENCE

Sometimes though, it's all about luck in the beginning.