Lucas's description of his game as "minimal luck" is objectively untrue when you consider the gameplay mechanics.
Whether or not you get the right materials for your machine component depends entirely on luck of the dice. The ability of players to arbitrarily choose whatever they want to be their machine (and presumably components) is retarded, but presents the only opportunity for strategy in the gameplay.
The game is ultimately a brain-teaser about thinking of a common system that has components made from the simplest materials possible (items on the list) and require the least refinement. One thoughtfully-chosen item could be a basketball court (hemp for the net, ore and oil for the hoop, wood for the backboard, rubber for the ball, tar and sand for the asphalt, and wood for the scoreboard).
How appropriate that Lucas's feral brain produced what is essentially a contest of caveman engineering (that he would surely lose).
It's not like this battle of the minds would be very enjoyable to play, though. With a one-in six chance at best of getting the right resource per roll, and there being six components per machine, and with each person's roll taking 30 seconds, each round of machine-building would take at minimum 36 minutes to complete. Six rounds of that lunacy to complete a whole game would take 3.5-4 hours if it was played very quickly, and probably much longer if attempted casually. A match of "Age of Steel" (nonsense name) would just be two autists rolling dice at each other for an excruciating 4+ hours, while periodically entertaining the same thought experiment every ~45 minutes. Smart, pretty, interesting girls would definitely never sit down for a match of this.
Lucas "Pedophile" Werner's board games have been progressively deteriorating in terms of complexity and coherence (previously not thought possible). This one isn't even a board game anymore, because it could be played with nothing but dice, a pen, and some scratch paper.
His schizomind is assigning attributes to these games that don't even apply, such as the buzzword "minimal luck". You're right, Lucas; people would be experiencing "minimal luck" if they ever ended up playing this!
ETA: Spelling