Im surprised you dont have Elvish Piper or Norwood Priestess. Also, I realize that it doesn't synergize with your commander specifically, but Lurking Predators would be tremendously strong in this deck granted all of your other cards are creatures.

Primal Surge

Also, do you have any tip on a creature way to deal with Avacyn, Angel of Hope?

Bloodspawn You can use Angel of Serenity or Fairgrounds Warden. Otherwise you need to use something that can take control of it

Bloodspawn: in these colors, you have options like Duplicant, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, or one I run now, Hateflayer, all of which can get rid of indestructible creatures (the first two via exile, Hateflayer via reducing Avacyn to 0 toughness with -1/-1 counters) without necessarily needing to get into combat with them. Then there's the indirect ways to get rid of her (creatures that just have Infect/Wither getting in a scrap with her, Annihilator triggers or the like making her get sacrificed or exiled), or just playing around her abilities and likely lines of play with creatures like Vigor that make any flier or reach creature (like say... Ruric himself) able to block her all day long and get more swole in the process, you could run Soul of New Phyrexia or Spearbreaker Behemoth to protect against the likely many board wipes someone running Avacyn as a general is likely to have, etc. Some of those are cards I personally do not endorse actually playing, but the options are still there.

As for Primal Surge, that is a card I intentionally do not play, for very much the same reasons that I frown on things like Tooth and Nail - in a deck that is otherwise all permanents, it turns 10 mana into "welp, guess I win out of nowhere now unless someone is sitting on an answer", and from my perspective that is an extremely cheap way to win games of Commander; it's the narrative equivalent of the DM telling the party "Rocks fall, everyone dies" - the ebb and flow of the match was telling a story that the "I win" button just ruined, and I care far far more about the quality of the games I play then their actual outcomes (winning is always the goal but never actually the point, in other words). Also, Primal Surge is not a creature.

Thanks for all the input!

May I suggest Kamahl, Fist of Krosa? He's an overrun effect stapled to a creature. And he also provides insurance against board wipes by turning your opponent's lands into creatures. See how much they like that lol

Also, creatures like Somberwald Sage and Shaman of Forgotten Ways provide nice ramping in a creature based deck.

NinjaKitty778 - I've considered Kamahl in the past, but as useful as Overrun on a stick is, his CMC and stats are both too expensive and underwhelming respectively; in the 99, I'd have to have 11 mana open for him to do anything the turn he's played (spite-animating opponents lands in response to board wipes is funny, but not really what I consider "having immediate impact").

Shaman of Forgotten Ways is indeed nice ramp in a creature based deck... which is why he's already in it. Somberwald Sage on the other hand is great at what she does... but that's literally all she does and she's oh so very fragile, which is why I ultimately never added her.

I'm looking to build a Ruric Thar deck myself. I need another ally color guild deck. I honestly think you need more early drops, and some stable ramp from creatures (like Wood Elves or Farhaven Elf ). Other than that, love the list. Any advice you have for making the deck since you have experience with it?

what do you think of the new neheb the eternal in here?

@LuminAutopsy - I thought a lot about that actually, but as cool as that card is I don't think Neheb makes the cut in this particular deck; the problem is that other than leveling up Lord of Shatterskull Pass, there's nothing that producing a bunch of post-combat is useful for, apart from general-purpose ramp (which is still good obviously). In another deck that uses Aggravated Assault (or has mana-sinks that do something other than firebreathing until EoT, ) he seems fantastic though.

@Vinman - Adding additional early-game ramp effects would probably make things more consistent, but those are miserable late-game top-decks and I really don't have issues with mana-production with the deck as is (provided of course that I keep a starting hand with a reasonable number of lands in it).

As for building your own version, that really depends on what direction you want to take it and how committed you are to Ruric's shtick - the deck I play is faaaaaar from optimal, but that's on purpose (I could easily make this much much better, but also much less fun to play against). You can build Ruric as full blown Gruul Control if that's your jam, and when you don't restrict yourself to only including creatures there's stuff like Possibility Storm out there, waiting to make you all the friends in the world.

It occurred to me that I overlooked a sink for red mana - Obsidian Fireheart. I still don't think Neheb makes the cut though.

How about Primal Surge? Bit of a glass cannon approach but it's an awful lot of big guys with haste out of nowhere.

YEAH, DEFINITELY TOO SUBTLE.

+1 FOR GRUUL AND GLORY! AND ANOTHER +1 IF I COULD FOR ALL THE SHINY!

CRUSH THEM!