When a tournament first begins it is far better to play loose as limping in blinds or 3x 4x blind raise is less then 5% of your chip stack and odds are you can trap others using this method of loose play and get ahead of the crowd early on. You want advantage, and the more chips you hold the higher you have the advantage, because you can afford to see more hands played then others. Hope this helps you and good luck.
^^^Not recommended per se.
Avoid the first few orbits unless you have monsters. There are so many loosies playing for that quick advantage that they generally will neutralize themselves. Use those first few orbits to get a feel for the table and its players. Take notes.
Your primary goal is to survive. Many will tell you to play to win early. TOTAL HOGWASH! In order to WIN, you have to survive. If you feel lucky, go ahead, play those minor advantages that work in ring. But note that you will be pegged early by tourney regs as a cash guy.
On average most tourneys take 100 hand s to get to the money. you will want to find 5 spots to get all -in, and you want to do that with the best edge you can. Alternately you can steal a lot of small pots, but do it as cheaply as possible. Everyone these days has a fair understanding of tourney play, so do not assume fish, rather assume ring guys trying to be tourney guys.
Yes, you can be a little loose early, but do it cheaply, and don't assume many bluffs will work. Until you have a decent read on your table, be cautious and patient. Once you think you have reads on your table.......boom, you will change tables........
Patience. You should not worry about the tourney chip leaders. Average chip stacks should be fine. Remember if you can stay near average, you will end up HU for the big prize.
HUD's help. Except Carbons free HUD, which resets at each table change. It is nice for detecting trends at a long run on a single table, but that doesn't happen all that often.
In the end, you will credit your patience and survival mindset for your cashes.
For a transition to tourney approach, I would suggest STT's they play a little more like cash games than MTT's.
I, for one would suggest you do this ubber cheap, as in learn the differences via play money games, but I am unique in that I understand what can and can not be learned via play money games. So ignore that advice if you love paying for you education.