Small aside: how many artifacts would you need to have in order to make Academy Ruins worthwhile?
I don't think you need that many to make it useful, it's more of a question of what you're really looking to recurr (just getting back a signet or similar isn't usually worth the activation) and possibly more importantly, how many slots can you spend on colourless lands. For this point, it looks like your fixing is very good and you're only in two colours, so it's probably worth running in your deck given how low the drawback is, even if you don't activate it that much.
A few thoughts on some of the cards being discussed based on my experience with Raff, which has become one of my favourite decks over the last 6 months or so:
Azami is pretty good - flash her in EoT, draw 2 cards (her and Raff). If an opponent can't kill her immediately, you untap and have two more draws whenever you want. At that point, even if she dies, you've gotten a Tidings, which is a perfectly playable card, and made an opponent use up some removal. God forbid she stays around for a third turn and/or you have another wizard or two....
Crystal Shard is a kinda weird one at first glance, as you don't have a lot of ETB things to abuse, but I definitely think it's worth a slot in Raff. The main thing it will bounce is Raff himself in response to a board wipe or targeted removal. Normally, having a card to do this on your commander isn't really worth it, but with Raff, it's different thanks to the flash. You're typically keeping up mana for as long as possible. So when a board wipe hits (which from my experience is usually every 2-3 turns, this is EDH after all), you've got 5+ mana available, you can bounce Raff, then replay him EoT, saving on the commander tax. I started running it on a whim as I had one and wanted to see how well this line of thought would work. After a couple of games, I put Erratic Portal in too and started aggressively tutoring them. Keeping Raff around is so important to being able to play the deck properly, and these two artifacts ensure that Raff remains affordable - I've had games where I've cast him half-a-dozen times without ever paying tax. And there's the side effect of forcing your opponents to keep a mana up if they want to do creature based stuff - which also ties very well into Raff's flash grating ability. I've often dropped these after a player has tapped out suiting up their commander and swung at me. If you find he's not dying often, then maybe change it, but I love these cards, and my playgroup have come to hate them.
In Bolas's Clutches is expensive, but instant speed steal anything is a very strong effect. You can do all sorts of messing with combat, the instant speed gives "psuedo haste" to creatures you steal, taking 'walkers at instant speed can get you some great value (Last weekend one opponent had a Jace, Unraveler of Secrets on 8, which I stole in response to a Steel Hellkite trigger from another player) and so on. If it got a functional reprint, I probably wouldn't run a second of them, but having one is a useful tool. This does rather tie back into the Crystal Shard thing - I really want to have Raff around at all times, so I put in extra effort to keep him there. If you're regularly having to cast In Bolas's Clutches on your own turn, then it looks a lot less interesting.
In terms of draw, I like to see blue lists running a lot more of the cheap stuff, particularly the cantrips. Opt, Impulse, Anticipate, Telling Time, Brainstorm and so on. Ponder, Preordain, Portent are all sorceries, but you can spare 1 mana on your turn and they smooth out your plays so much, particularly early on in the game. I'd actually recommend cutting a few lands for these. The old "xerox" deck principle still holds - 2 good cheap cantrips means 1 less land needed. In terms of "big" draw, I'd try to get 1 or two of the X spells in there. Pull From Tomorrow is easily the best, and I'd always try to fit it in but also adding a Blue Sun's Zenith might be worth it - it's pretty inefficient card wise, but it gives you something good to do EoT if there's no need for your interaction or flash creatures. Search for Azcanta is another great source of card quality (pre-flip) and advantage (post flip) that happens to be legendary.
I like cantrips on bodies. They're usually stronger for me that cantrips on spells.
While being a creture is nice, you're paying for it. This is basically two mana for a pretty useless body unless you have specific synergies (most likely blink). This isn't limited where a 1/3 can actually impact the game. It's not a bad card by any means, but it needs to be in a specific deck rather than being a staple the way many of the spell cantrips (particularly the 1 mana ones) are. Of course, if you are playing a blink deck, it's close to being a no-brainer.
Plus, of course, not everything has to be a historic card. Good old fashioned instants like Counterspell and Swords to Plowshares fit very nicely into Raff - draw go on your turn, then interact if you need to or play an artifact or legend EoT if you don't. As I play it, Raff is basically a classic UW control deck, just with more options as to what I can play on your turn. Seeing out games can sometimes be a little slow, but that's hardly exclusive to Raff when it comes to UW in commander, and there are some decent options around. A control deck doesn't need that many wincons, so putting in a few threatening historic creatures and/or a bit of equipment can help - even just something like Blackblade Reforged will make Raff an evasive 3 (and later maybe 2) turn clock, and can again just be dropped in EoT on a turn you've got the spare mana.
Might give the new Narset a try in Raff. The -2 ability is solid, but it's the static makes me rather interested. I'd much prefer a Notion Thief of course, but in the absence of B, she's the best I can do, and it's definitely a strong effect. Without the ability to flash her in though, I'm not so sure how good she is. Maybe if you're already heavy on the wheel/twister effects.
Return to Nature is one of my favourite cards in the set. Simple, but versatile and effective.
I like kagemaro, first to suffer, since it is easier to make into a wrath (incl. bigger creatures) the others are mainly small creature killers.
I'll second this, at least from the perspective of my Chainer, Dementia Master deck. Massacre Wurm and co are certainly good cards, but they aren't going to clear a board outside of some additional shenanigans. Meanwhile stuff like Dread Cacodemon need to be cast to get the effect, so won't do anything when reanimated. Leaving Kagemaro as my preferred option as it can both kill decent sized critters and works with my general's recursion.
Kefnet does look pretty good. Not "broken" in a world of partners, food chain and flash-hulk, but probably getting close to competitive. A repeatable way of putting cards on top of your library (JTMS, Scroll Rack, Brainstorm on a Stick) plus an extra turn spell (even the self exiling ones) is infinite, and all of those things will still generate a lot of value without the other pieces.
To be fair, I can see Vivien's Grizzly seeing a little play as it gives green decks a second Duskwatch Recruiter: a tutorable mana sink that should win the game that turn if you've got infinte mana (assuming you've actually built your deck with this in mind). I've seen a few decks that might want a second copy of this effect. Not that Sheldon actually mentions this use of it in his article, but still....
I could see wanting this in a deck such as Talrand, Sky Summoner or Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper as a free instant speed way to trigger them. Sadly, colour identity says "hi", which leaves few options left. Jori En, Ruin Diver is probably the most likely to want it - should be pretty easy to turn it into a cantrip. But whether that's really worth it over just running another spell that consistently does something? Not sure.
Fantastic cycle of mana rocks. Non-green decks should almost always be running all the ones they can, and green decks should seriously consider them.
As for the rest of the cycle, it's not impossible. I can't see it happening in a standard legal set, but there are enough supplementary products around these days that there should be somewhere Wizards can get them in, and they must know by now that they're wanted.
Natural Balance is a card I always found to be very inconsistent. There were times when it was amazing, and there were times when I couldn't get a good use out of it. As such, I ended up cutting it, along with several other cards with similar problems (Natural Affinity, Constant Mists).
As a commander, he was horribly well suited to abusing the format - not only was there enough fast mana to get him consistently T3, and sometimes T2, but you generally then had the life to immediately draw 35, usually hitting some more mana to immediately then combo or tutor for combo, or gain even more life to draw more. Basically, it was a very, very good "counterspell or die" deck. He wasn't quite so bad in the 99, as, unless you're building around him, you don't have either the consistency or the ability to combo off so easily from the draws. He was still centralising in a PrimeTime way though - the game became about him.
That said, I do wonder somewhat how bad he would be in this day and age. I suspect he would still be a bit to consistently good as a commander, but CEDH wasn't nearly as well developed as a format in Grisel's brief time in the spotlight and as such, there wasn't the overall power level at the top end of the game there is now.
Whomever changed the title to “Boros” from “Boris” I love you. Every time I saw this title, and after the first time I clicked on it and realized the OP meant to type Boros, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the eyeball.
I don't think you need that many to make it useful, it's more of a question of what you're really looking to recurr (just getting back a signet or similar isn't usually worth the activation) and possibly more importantly, how many slots can you spend on colourless lands. For this point, it looks like your fixing is very good and you're only in two colours, so it's probably worth running in your deck given how low the drawback is, even if you don't activate it that much.
Azami is pretty good - flash her in EoT, draw 2 cards (her and Raff). If an opponent can't kill her immediately, you untap and have two more draws whenever you want. At that point, even if she dies, you've gotten a Tidings, which is a perfectly playable card, and made an opponent use up some removal. God forbid she stays around for a third turn and/or you have another wizard or two....
Crystal Shard is a kinda weird one at first glance, as you don't have a lot of ETB things to abuse, but I definitely think it's worth a slot in Raff. The main thing it will bounce is Raff himself in response to a board wipe or targeted removal. Normally, having a card to do this on your commander isn't really worth it, but with Raff, it's different thanks to the flash. You're typically keeping up mana for as long as possible. So when a board wipe hits (which from my experience is usually every 2-3 turns, this is EDH after all), you've got 5+ mana available, you can bounce Raff, then replay him EoT, saving on the commander tax. I started running it on a whim as I had one and wanted to see how well this line of thought would work. After a couple of games, I put Erratic Portal in too and started aggressively tutoring them. Keeping Raff around is so important to being able to play the deck properly, and these two artifacts ensure that Raff remains affordable - I've had games where I've cast him half-a-dozen times without ever paying tax. And there's the side effect of forcing your opponents to keep a mana up if they want to do creature based stuff - which also ties very well into Raff's flash grating ability. I've often dropped these after a player has tapped out suiting up their commander and swung at me. If you find he's not dying often, then maybe change it, but I love these cards, and my playgroup have come to hate them.
In Bolas's Clutches is expensive, but instant speed steal anything is a very strong effect. You can do all sorts of messing with combat, the instant speed gives "psuedo haste" to creatures you steal, taking 'walkers at instant speed can get you some great value (Last weekend one opponent had a Jace, Unraveler of Secrets on 8, which I stole in response to a Steel Hellkite trigger from another player) and so on. If it got a functional reprint, I probably wouldn't run a second of them, but having one is a useful tool. This does rather tie back into the Crystal Shard thing - I really want to have Raff around at all times, so I put in extra effort to keep him there. If you're regularly having to cast In Bolas's Clutches on your own turn, then it looks a lot less interesting.
In terms of draw, I like to see blue lists running a lot more of the cheap stuff, particularly the cantrips. Opt, Impulse, Anticipate, Telling Time, Brainstorm and so on. Ponder, Preordain, Portent are all sorceries, but you can spare 1 mana on your turn and they smooth out your plays so much, particularly early on in the game. I'd actually recommend cutting a few lands for these. The old "xerox" deck principle still holds - 2 good cheap cantrips means 1 less land needed. In terms of "big" draw, I'd try to get 1 or two of the X spells in there. Pull From Tomorrow is easily the best, and I'd always try to fit it in but also adding a Blue Sun's Zenith might be worth it - it's pretty inefficient card wise, but it gives you something good to do EoT if there's no need for your interaction or flash creatures. Search for Azcanta is another great source of card quality (pre-flip) and advantage (post flip) that happens to be legendary.
While being a creture is nice, you're paying for it. This is basically two mana for a pretty useless body unless you have specific synergies (most likely blink). This isn't limited where a 1/3 can actually impact the game. It's not a bad card by any means, but it needs to be in a specific deck rather than being a staple the way many of the spell cantrips (particularly the 1 mana ones) are. Of course, if you are playing a blink deck, it's close to being a no-brainer.
Return to Nature is one of my favourite cards in the set. Simple, but versatile and effective.
I'll second this, at least from the perspective of my Chainer, Dementia Master deck. Massacre Wurm and co are certainly good cards, but they aren't going to clear a board outside of some additional shenanigans. Meanwhile stuff like Dread Cacodemon need to be cast to get the effect, so won't do anything when reanimated. Leaving Kagemaro as my preferred option as it can both kill decent sized critters and works with my general's recursion.
As for the rest of the cycle, it's not impossible. I can't see it happening in a standard legal set, but there are enough supplementary products around these days that there should be somewhere Wizards can get them in, and they must know by now that they're wanted.
That said, I do wonder somewhat how bad he would be in this day and age. I suspect he would still be a bit to consistently good as a commander, but CEDH wasn't nearly as well developed as a format in Grisel's brief time in the spotlight and as such, there wasn't the overall power level at the top end of the game there is now.
Booo....
It was far more interesting with the old title.